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THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 
E. F. BENSON 



BY E. F. BENSON 



THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

CRESCENT AND IRON CROSS 

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR 

THE TORTOISE 

MICHAEL 

THE OAKLEYITES 

DAVID BLAIZE 

ARUNDEL 

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPAN-Y 
NEW YORK 



THE WHITE EAGLE 
OF POLAND 

BY 

EyP. BENSON 

AUTHOR OF "CRESCENT AND IRON CROSS." 

"THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR," 

ETC. 




NEW SiSJ^ YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






^> 



COPYRIGHT, 1919, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



\k V 



V 



JAN 18 1919 
©GI.A511351 



PREFACE 

This book is divided into two parts, the first of 
which is mainly concerned with the reconstruc- 
tion of a Polish State after the victorious close of 
onr war against the Central Empires, a policy to 
which the Governments of the Powers of the En- 
tente, including America, have repeatedly given 
expression both in independent and in joint utter- 
ances. In this part an attempt is made to set 
forth how Poland will form an indispensable lint 
in the cordon of free states which will for all time 
prevent Germany from penetrating Eastwards at 
will, absorbing the countries through which she 
eats her way until she lays hands on Egypt and 
India, and there follows on the disintegration of 
the British Empire her domination of the world. 

To avert this, it is necessary that, among other 
provisions, there shall be established a powerful 
Polish State, living in harmony with Russia (in 
whatever form Russia will emerge from chaos) 
and constituting a permanent barrier against the 
Teutonic power on its West. It is vital to the 
peace of the world for which the Entente is fight- 






vi PREFACE 

ing that Poland, once split up by the partitions, 
should be reunited and independent again, and 
thus the aim of the Entente is identical with the 
aspirations of Polish patriots. It is safe to say 
that no more gigantic and complicated question 
has ever arisen in international politics, but it is 
hoped that the reader may find in this part of the 
book some statement of the problem which will 
enable him to realize what the German menace 
Eastwards means, and how it may be checked. 

Chapter II of this part of the book deals with 
the partitions of Poland which took place at the 
end of the 18th century, so that the reader may 
understand not only how such a restoration of 
Poland is necessary for the peace of the world, 
but how the Polish nation, on the grounds that 
nationalities have a right to separate and inde- 
pendent existence, claims the fulfilment of one of 
the avowed aims of the Entente, and the righting 
of an intolerable injustice. 

Part II deals with the internal conditions of the 
Russian Kingdom of Poland from the outbreak of 
the war in August, 1914, down to (roughly) the 
end of February, 1918, and is mainly based on 
such information as has reached England from 
Polish, German, Austrian and Russian sources. 
Accounts of the happenings there since the coun- 



PREFACE vii 

try has been occupied by the enemy are sometimes 
conflicting, for information derived from Polish 
sources does not invariably tally with the German 
or Austrian view of a question, but, as a rule, 
subsequent news has disentangled the truth. 

These sections and those dealing with the vari- 
ous proposed ** solutions^' of the Polish question 
as set forth by the occupying powers, will, it is 
feared, be found difficult to follow, and while crav- 
ing indulgence for any failure to present the case 
lucidly, the writer ventures to remind his readers 
that, where a question is in itself complicated, n,o 
lucidity of treatment can make it easy of compre- 
hension. All he has hoped to avoid is confusion. 

Statistics with regard to the populations of 
Poland, Lithuania, etc., are, since the country has 
been in the enemy's hands, difficult to verify, and 
in most cases the figures given are pre-war fig- 
ures, which must be taken as being only approx- 
imately true. 

Two maps will be found at the end of the book. 
By consulting the first of these the reader will 
realize the extent of the ancient republic of Po- 
land before the partitions, and the nationalities of 
which it was composed: the second represents 
Poland as it was in 1914, when shared up between 
Germany, Austria and Russia. 



viii PREFACE 

Finally my best thanks are due to the officials 
of various Government departments and to the 
representatives of the Polish National Committee 
in London and Paris for the information with 
which they have so generously furnished me. 
Without that it would have been impossible to 
present, however faintly, the main lines of what 
is perhaps the most intricate problem that will 
arise when the Powers of the Entente are at 
length completely victorious over the Central Em- 
pires. 

E. F. Benson. 



CONTENTS 
PART I 

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF POLAND 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Poland and Mittbl-Europa 000 

II Poland Under the Partitions .... 000 

III Poland and the Entente 000 

VI Poland's Place in New Europe .... 000 



PART II 
THE GERMAN OCCUPATION OP POLAND 

I The Russian Proclamation 000 

II The First Year of the German Occupation 000 

III Attempted Solutions ....... 000 

IV Poi^isH Independence (Made in Germany) 000 
V (i) The Polish Legions . . . . . . 000 

(ii) Further Independence op Poland . . 000 



PART I 

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF 
POLAND 



PART I 

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF 
POLAND 



CHAPTER I 

Poland and Mittel-Eueopa 

At the begiimmg of the war it is probable that few 
people of average education had any very ac- 
curate idea even of the place which the Kingdom 
of Poland occupies on the map of Europe, and to 
the English mind it but belonged to that nebulous 
system of geographical expressions such as Bo- 
hemia, Galicia or Serbia, indefinite, shadowy states 
towards the East of Europe, concerning which it 
was necessary to consult an atlas. Fewer still 
knew anything about its past history or its present 
condition, beyond, perhaps, that it was connected 
with Russia, since they mildly remembered that 
the Tsar of all the Russias was also King of 
Poland, much as the German Emperor was also 
King of Prussia. And fewest of all even among 

13 



14 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

the skilled and well-informed angnrs of political 
omens saw or gnessed that before the war was 
over Poland would have acquired so huge a sig- 
nificance as it, and the problems connected with 
it, imply to-day. For to-day the majority of far- 
seeing and large-minded statesmen, both in Eng- 
land and the Allied countries, are perfectly well 
aware that the eventual solution of the question 
of Poland, which at present is in joint German 
and Austrian occupation, will supply a fair and 
adequate criterion as to which group of belliger- 
ents may be considered to have won the European 
war. Germany knows that no less well than we, 
and though her armies might be beaten in the field, 
and though she might be compelled to accept a 
peace without other annexations, coupled with the 
retrocession of Alsace and Lorraine to France, 
with the restoration of Belgium and the re-estab- 
lishment of Serbia, if she could make an arrange- 
ment about Poland and the problems of her east- 
ward expansion which are bound up with it satis- 
factory to her own statesmen, she would be en- 
titled to consider herself at any rate undefeated. 
For the economic and political victory she would 
have won would fully compensate for a disaster 
to her arms, and in ten years or less she could be 
the aggressor in another war which would in all 



POLAND AND MITTEL-EUROPA 15 

probability leave her mistress of the world. This 
may sound an exaggerated menace, but it is in 
truth a sober and considered statement of fact, for 
the policy known as the Mittel-Europa policy 
would have achieved a signal victory of supreme 
importance which would be certain to lead to 
further success and the ultimate realization of its 
complete aims. Intimately bound up with the 
destiny of Poland is that of Bohemia: this does 
not, however, except marginally, fall within the 
scope of this book. 

Broadly speaking, there are two parties in Ger- 
many which by different methods seek the attain- 
ment of world-power. They are in harmony with 
each other in that each cordially approves of the 
other's policy as an auxiliary of its own. The 
Pan-German party seek the expansion of the Ger- 
man Empire and the overthrow of the British 
primarily by conquest and annexation westward, 
while the Mittel-Europa party (with Hindenburg 
to help) seek the same expansion and the same 
overthrow by an easterly progression. Thus the 
Pan-Germans proclaim as a sine-qua-non of peace- 
terms the retention of Antwerp and of Alsace and 
Lorraine by the Central Powers (in other words, 
Germany), and the reduction of Belgium, under 
the guise of a German-protected autonomy, to the 



16 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

position of a German province. The Mittel-En- 
ropa party, on the other hand, aim at the expan- 
sion and extension of German ** spheres of in- 
terest^' (or whatever meiosis they care to adopt 
as synonymous with the simpler word * ^con- 
quest'' ) eastward, hoping to bring about the reali- 
sation of the same '*far-otf event" by the direct 
menace to Egypt and India. Already they have 
achieved much, and not only is it necessary for 
the prosperity and even the existence of the Brit- 
ish Empire that their work in this direction should 
be checked, but much that they have done must 
certainly be undone again before security against 
universal German domination can return to the 
world. As Mr. L. B. Namier has admirably said: 
*^The old continental dream of Napoleon — an 
overland route into Asia^ — ^has become the cardi- 
nal issue of the war. ' ' * 

This expansion of Germany eastwards by means 
of *^ peaceful penetration" had made great strides 
before the outbreak of the European war, as the 
events of the war soon discovered for us. The 
chaos and annihilation of Eussia as a Power, for 
instance, has not been due solely to the socialistic 
upheaval which finally produced its impotence, and 
indeed that upheaval itself was largely brought 

* * * The Case of Bohemia, ' ' by L. B. Nanier, p. 3. 



POLAND AND MITTEL-EUROPA 17 

about by the peaceful penetration of German gold. 
But apart from that, German intrigue and the dis- 
integrating acid of German influence had already 
eaten the sap out of the Empire of the Tsars, and 
the fall of the Imperial family, the fall of Keren- 
sky, and the complete anarchy produced by the 
Bolsheviks were all as much due to German 
machinations as to the inherent instability of that 
ricketty colossus, the Russian Empire. In Russia, 
Germany's programme, in accordance with the pol- 
icy of Mittel-Europa, has been to sow the seeds of 
self-destruction in foreign fields, and when that 
crop was reaped to fertilize them afresh with 
vigorous Teutonic grain. A strong efficient Russia 
would always have been a barrier to her progress ; 
for Russia, mistress, of herself and her millions, 
and competent to develop her inexhaustible riches 
of men and material, would have been fatal to Ger- 
many's unlimited expansion eastwards. Whether 
or no she has made a huge miscalculation, and in 
helping to create the anarchy of Bolshevism has 
raised a Frankenstein monster which she is un- 
unable to control, and which may penetrate to the 
heart of Germany herself, whither the Russian 
legions were unable to force a way, is a question 
that is now troubling the shrewdest brains in 



18 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

Berlin, and is likely to trouble them more before 
they have framed a reassuring answer. 

A strong Russia, then, was the last thing that 
Germany desired, for she could not possibly hope 
to use the strength and stability of Russia for her 
own ends, and therefore Russia's strength was a 
barrier to her advance. But (still tracing the 
policy of the Mittel-Europa party) her method 
with regard to Turkey was precisely the opposite 
to her Russian programme. The sick man (to 
adopt Lord Aberdeen's obsolete and misleading 
phrase) could never seriously threaten the ad- 
vance of her plans, and while the rest of the 
European powers were propping up the throne of 
Abdul-Hamid and, subsequently, the Camorra of 
the Young Turks, for fear of the confusion and 
quarrelling that would follow on the disintegration 
of the Turkish Empire, Germany, with a livelier 
foresight and an experter medical skill, was, as it 
were, transfusing her own blood into the veins of 
the patient. What she wanted was not a weak 
Turkey, but a strong Turkey who should be hers, 
and from the earliest days of the reign of the 
present Emperor, Wilhelm II, until to-day, she 
has been strengthening the hands of the Turk, 
knowing that the strength with which she sup- 
plied him was being converted back into her own. 



POLAND AND MITTEL-EUROPA 19 

Like, it is true, seeks like, and the psychical af&nity 
of Turk and German was very clearly shewn in 
their respective treatments of Armenians and Bel- 
gians, but there was more than brotherly sym- 
pathy in the hand-clasp of Berlin and Constanti- 
nople. To-day the Sultan writhes in the famous 
iron grip of the hand that sought his so cordially. 
It is worth while, with the object of understand- 
ing the policy of Mittel-Europa, to survey quite 
briefly its dealings with Turkey, dictated with the 
view of turning Turkey, as Germany has now com- 
pletely done, into a German province, not less 
dependent on her and her armies than is the king- 
dom of Hanover or Bavaria. The merchant of 
Bremen knows very well that his prosperity is 
bound up with the military efficiency of the Father- 
land, and in exactly the same way Talaat and 
Enver and the Sultan (who once was the shadow 
of God, and is now the shadow of Wilhelm II) 
know that unless the victory in the present war 
rests with the German arms, the ill-knit Ottoman 
Empire, in which the majority of the populations 
consists not of Turks but of alien races, will be in 
large measure taken from them by the dispositions 
of the Allies, who have pledged themselves to free 
those peoples from the unspeakable tyranny of the 
Turk. The Sultan by now understands, too, that 



m THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

his empire has already become a vassal state of 
Germany, who permits him to manage its internal 
affairs only in so far as they concern massacres 
and reforms of that description. In other re- 
spects, all Turkish matters, military, naval, eco- 
nomical, educational and financial, are in German 
hands. And this result is the work of the Mittel- 
Europa policy, part of the projected scheme. 

The Emperor Wilhelm II paid a memorable 
visit to Abdul-Hamid not long after the Armenian 
massacres of 1895, and on that occasion ineffectu- 
ally tried to gain his consent to a scheme for Ger- 
man colonisation of the lands depopulated by the 
massacres. This time he plucked at a fruit that 
was out of reach, and it was not till after the 
deposition of Abdul-Hamid by the Young Turk 
party that the loaded bough began to droop into 
accessibility. Germany wanted a strong Turkey, 
and while her peaceful penetration prospered and 
she got Turkish concessions, and proceeded apace 
with the Bagdad railway, her officers were busy 
introducing Prussian thoroughness into the ram- 
shackle organisation of the Turkish army. 
Though the Young Turk movement momentarily 
upset her plans, she soon saw the wisdom of ally- 
ing herself, heart and soul, with it, and continued 
her support when it was merged in the Nationalist 



POLAND AND MITTEL-EUROPA 21 

1 :;^::^:!!^ 

movement, penetrating all the time, and within a 
few days of the outbreak of war in 1914, Enver 
Pasha returned to Constantinople from Berlin 
with a Germano-Tnrkish treaty in his pocket. By 
the end of October the mobilization of the Turkish 
armies was complete, and our diplomatic relations 
with Turkey were severed. From that day to this, 
Germany has never halted for a moment in her 
exploitation of Turkey for her own ends, ends 
concerned not only with the military conduct of 
the war, but with the ultimate objective of the 
Mittel-Europa policy. While she has immensely 
increased Turkey's resources, she has also re- 
duced the Ottoman Empire to a state of complete 
bankruptcy by the simple expedient of advancing 
paper money, and bargaining for its repayment 
after the end of the war in gold. And not one 
penny of that paper money has benefited Turkey 
in any way, for it has all been spent in the raising 
of troops to fight for Germany, and in industrial 
schemes of which the produce is used for the in- 
ternal and the military needs of Germany. There 
are irrigation works at Adana which greatly in- 
crease the cereals that supply the Central Em- 
pires: there are thousands of acres under beet- 
cultivation at Konia, the sugar from which goes 
to Germany. There are training schools and boy- 



22 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

I 

scout establishments all over the empire which 
raise men for the armies that Germany employs, 
there are wireless stations that send her mes- 
sages, and submarine bases that harbour her 
pirate-boats. The Taurus tunnel on the Berlin- 
Bagdad railway has been finished, hundreds of 
miles of other railways have been opened up, 
others, under German efficiency, have been made 
to pay substantial dividends, while the labour and 
materials necessary for these exploitations have 
been discharged by German paper lent to Turkey 
and to be repaid in gold. And though such part of 
the native populations as is not of use to Germany 
may be starving, Turkey's value as a military, an 
industrial, and an economic asset is vastly greater 
to-day than it ever has been, for Germany has set 
the Ottoman house in order since it is an annexe in 
the plans of her own world-wide palace, and Ana- 
tolian soldiers are a wheel in the great German 
war-machine, which shall Juggernaut its way over 
the entire globe. 

It may reasonably be asked what induced Tur- 
key to give over into German hands all that con- 
stitutes a nation's independence, and the answer 
is the ^^ attractive proposition" which Germany 
laid before her. This bait which she has so 
temptingly dangled before the rulers of the Otto- 



POLAND AND MITTEL-EUROPA 2S 

fc ■ ■ — — 

man Empire in order to persuade them to let her 
raise men and materials to fight her battles for her 
is the vision of an immensely expanded Ottoman 
Empire which shall have its capital at Constan- 
tinople. The book written by Tekin Alp, nnder 
which psendonym nestles a Salonica Jew (I believe 
called Cohen), admirably sets this forth. His 
work, entitled *' Turks and the Pan-Turkish 
Ideal,'' published in 1915, and distributed broad- 
cast over the Ottoman Empire as German propa- 
ganda, shews us into what dreamings have the 
Turks been hypnotised. All Moslem peoples are 
to be comprised in this re-united Turkey, which 
will include the whole of Egypt as far as Victoria 
Nyanza, Arabia, Persia, the greater part of India, 
the littoral of the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, the 
Aral Sea. All this will be Turkey's, if Turkey 
will prosecute Germany's war to its victorious 
close. But should she detach herself or should the 
Allies be victorious, she knows what to expect; 
Arabia, Syria, Palestine, Armenia, Mesopotamia, 
will be plucked from her, and until lately (Janu- 
ary, 1918) the Allies had proclaimed that they 
would expel her from Europe altogether. It was 
^^up to her" to choose, and she chose. But, if 
she only knew it, not only will she never get, in the 
event of Germany's victory, one yard of all those 



M THE WHITE EAGLE 0^ POLAND 

territories that are so succulently dangled in front 
of her, but under German penetration she has al- 
ready lost the last remnants of her Empire. 
Should Germany be victorious, Turkey will no 
longer exist: there will be but a new Germany 
in Europe and a new Germany in Asia, where 
Turkey once was. Germany will not technically 
have annexed it, since no doubt there will still be 
a Sultan in Constantinople. But none the less it 
will be hers, and its acquisition will be a stout 
volume, bound like a prize, in the records of the 
Mittel-Europa policy. For Turkey will, in other 
words, form part of the great high-road which 
Germany is constructing (with paper money to 
be repaid in gold) to lead from Berlin to Bombay. 
As for the value of German promises with regard 
to the augmented Empire, Turkey is already be- 
ginning to learn something, for though the littoral 
of the Black Sea was promised her, she has lately 
been very smartly snubbed for venturing to in- 
trude herself in affairs concerning the Crimea. 

Now, far-distant as Turkey is from mid-Europe, 
Germany's policy with regard to her is an integral 
and essential part of the Mittel-Europa scheme. 
It is precisely that which some of our Western 
politicians have completely missed. Because Tur- 
key is not the immediate link in the chain that 



POLAND AND MITTEL-EUROPA 25 

f 

is designed to connect Berlin with Egypt and 
India, they think that it has nothing to do with 
that chain, and will find ont to the infinite cost of 
the country whose eyes and intelligence they are 
supposed to be, that once given that Germany 
succeeds in obtaining a peace based on the ap- 
parent reasonabTeness of the formula ^'no annexa- 
tions,'^ she will by her "spheres of influence'' in 
Bulgaria, Eoumania, the Ukraine, and Turkey, 
have pushed her frontiers to the edge of the Per- 
sian Gulf. There is nothing that Mittel-Europa 
politicians would like better than to conclude a 
peace to-day on the basis of no annexations, for, 
technically, she has not annexed the Ottoman Em- 
pire (any more than she has annexed Poland, to 
whom she has several times granted "independ- 
ence"). But the effect would be that while we 
should have to clear out of Mesopotamia and 
Palestine, we should leave her in literal no less 
than in virtual possession of the lands between 
the Sea of Marmora and the Persian Gulf. That 
is what ^ * no annexation ' ' means to Germany, and 
on such a basis that is what she has already ac- 
quired, and if the unfathomable ignorance of cer- 
tain sections of the English press gives any indi- 
cation of the ignorance of the nation with regard 
to Turkey, its ignorance in the event of a peace 



26 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

at all in agreement with German ideas would be 
very speedily instructed. Those who maintain 
that Turkey is a nation of peaceful and gentle- 
manly agriculturists, harassed in the past by the 
unwarrantable aggression of Eussia, and now de- 
sirous only of being left to live a calm and Ar- 
cadian existence, are merely not aware that Turkey 
at the present time has no existence except as a 
military province of Germany, an acquisition of 
the very astute politicians of the Mittel-Europa 
school, who have hoodwinked them as completely 
as they have hoodwinked Turkey itself. Without 
for a moment suggesting that these blunt arrows 
for Turkey's defence have been supplied by Ger- 
many, it is at least reasonable to be amazed at 
the confidence with which a guileless Grub-street 
bowman faces the triumphant advance of the Cen- 
tral Empires. 

Turkey, then, at the present moment, so far from 
being a bar to the advance of Mittel-Europeanism, 
is but a forged link in its chain, if the doctrine of 
^^no annexation'' is accepted. Eussia has ceased 
to be able to resist the explosions of internal trou- 
ble, far less to oppose a front to attack from with- 
out (indeed, she is more like a squib that lies 
smouldering and may explode anywhere, than a 
light that shines), and the question immediately 



POLAND AND MITTEL-EUROPA 27 

confronts the Statesmen of the West as to how 
any dam can be erected which shall check the other- 
wise inevitable inundation of the German waters 
eastwards. No nonsense was so refined and dis- 
tilled as that which saw in Turkey even the foetus 
of a nation that could resist the German advance, 
for it is on Germany that its misplaced hopes of 
future existence depend. That these hopes will 
never be realised if once the doctrine of ^'no an- 
nexations'' is accepted, is of course obvious to 
any one who looks at all steadily at the situation 
or has ^^ heard tell" of Mittel-Europa. But then 
some people have not. They at least escape the 
danger of a little knowledge, since that little has 
not been granted to them. 

Meantime the Eastward expansion of Mittel- 
Europa has scored a huge success in the Ukrainian 
peace, for the Ukraine will as surely be put away 
in the great German pocket (that receptacle that 
aims at pouching the whole world) as Turkey has 
been, if Germany emerges from the war in a posi- 
tion to consolidate her easterly acquisitions, and 
weld them into the Mittel-Europa chain. The 
Black Sea, according to her programme, must be- 
come a German lake, and already she sees in her 
victory over Eoumania a further important link in 
the fetters which if one attached to Eastern Eur- 



28 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

ope can never be unshackled. In the Hamburger 
Nachrichten of Feb. 27, 1918, she jingles a fresh 
handful of these which ought to make any one 
capable of thought pause and consider. It is a 
typical piece of Mittel-Europa propaganda, the 
sort of thing which appears constantly in the press 
of the Central Empires, and it is good for English 
readers to know what ,they are talking about over 
there. 

The article in question, clearly inspired, begins 
as the statement of German schemes usually be- 
gins, benignly enough, and dreamily proposes that 
the Dobrudscha might possibly be given to Bul- 
garia as a reward for her military exertions, and 
that Rumania might be compensated {pace the 
Ukraine) with the south of Bessarabia. These 
two territories, of course, embrace the mouth of 
the Danube. Then, less dreamily, it awakes to 
the fact that German interests are owed a Ger- 
mano-protected region at the mouth of the Danube, 
for the Danube rises in German soil, and Germany 
has a further claim on territory at its mouth, since 
the conquest of the Dobrudscha was largely due 
to German arms, and ^ ' in political life it is always 
a mistake to exercise liberality without seeing that 
you get something for it." Germany must there- 



POLAND AND MITTEL-EUROPA 29 

fore reconsider her first plan of giving the Do- 
brudscha in its entirety to Bulgaria. 

The argument is now broad awake. It finds 
that on ethnological grounds Germany has a right 
to claim territory in the Dobrudscha, because 
among the 300,000 inhabitants of that district there 
are at least 10,000 German colonists. Germany 
therefore is entitled (on the principle she has 
always advocated of no ' annexation but the 
national right to national territory) to one-thir- 
tieth of the acreage of the Dobrudscha. That will 
perfectly content her, and she claims a fraction of 
her one-thirtieth at the mouth of the Danube. On 
similar grounds she claims a similar footing in 
Bessarabia (otherwise Rumania) and takes her 
acres exactly opposite, on the other bank of the 
Danube. She is still below the estimate of her 
proper percentage of territory, and so our article 
alludes to a convenient island in the Black Sea 
called Schlangeisel, which is 50 kilometres from 
the mouth of the Danube, and that she likewise 
earmarks. There is a poetic suitableness in her 
getting this little island, for the article naively ob- 
serves that Schlangeisel at the mouth of the Dan- 
ube quaintly corresponds to Heligoland at the 
mouth of the Elbe. 

Now the foregoing is a typical example of Ger- 



30 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

man reasoning, and it is allowable to wonder 
whether it even cares to deceive or is not rather a 
deliberate irony. In virtue of her German colo- 
nists, Germany is entitled to one-thirtieth of the 
Dobrudscha, and claims some paltry acres of this 
at the mouth of the Danube. A similar claim is 
advanced with regard to the other bank, and thus 
by judicious selection of her acreage Germany ob- 
tains precisely all she wants, i.e., control of the 
Danube, because she has a certain number of Ger- 
man colonists in the Dobrudscha ; and to complete 
the acreage due to her she adds this convenient 
Schlangeisel. By a similar reasoning she might 
claim a few square miles of Great Britain in vir- 
tue of German residents there, and select for those 
few miles the city of London, or perhaps the har- 
bours of Dover, Liverpool and Southampton . . . 
It is faintly possible that this soberly-propounded 
German scheme may induce a more public compre- 
hension of what Mittel-Europa stands for. 

But the people who had never heard of Poland 
in the year 1914 must four years later be surprised 
at the frequency with which they have since then 
heard of it in the pronouncements of the Govern- 
ments of the Entente. Again and again official 
statements about the objects for which the Allies: 



POLAND AND MITTEL-EUROPA 31 

are fighting, since the famous and unfortunately 
still-born proclamation of the Grand Duke Nich- 
olas during the first fortnight of the war, have 
alluded to the Independence of a united Poland 
as one of the conditions on which the treaty of 
peace shall be based. Not unreasonably the public 
has asked '^What has the war got to do with Po- 
land?'' But that a peace which postulates an 
independent and united existence for Poland is 
one of the irreducible minima of the Allies cannot 
escape the notice of the most careless reader. For 
beginning with the first pronouncement of the 
Grand Duke Nicholas, France by the mouths of 
MM. Clemenceau, Pichon and Ribot,* Italy by the 
mouth of Sig. Orlando, America by the mouth of 
Mr. Wilson, and England by the mouth of 
Sir Edward Grey, Mr. Asquith, Mr. Bonar Law, 
Mr. Lloyd George, and above all Mr. Balfour, 
have unanimously insisted on the independence of 
Poland and the reconstruction of the Polish State 
as an essential part of the aims of the Allies. To 
emphasize and unify these separate pronounce- 

* M. Ribot 's pronouncement, less well-known than that of other 
spokesmen, of the aims of the Entente, was in answer to a mes- 
sage from the Polish Congress in Moscow, in August, 1917. In 
it he greeted the re-construction of Polish independence, and the 
re-uniting up to the shores of the Baltic Sea, under the sover- 
eignty of the Polish State, of all the Polish lands. 



32 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

ments, the Prime Ministers of Great Britain, 
France and Italy jointly declared, on June 3, 1918, 
that ^^The creation of a united and independent 
Polish State, with free access to the sea, consti- 
tutes one of the conditions of a solid and just 
peace, and of the rule of right in Europe." 

England and France, and subsequently Italy 
and America, have all reiterated the same demand 
with a firmness that has never varied, although 
Poland had not been an independent country wan- 
tonly overrun by the armies of the Central Em- 
pires. For over a hundred years Poland had 
been a dismembered kingdom, part of which be- 
longed to the Tsar, part to the German, part to 
the Austrian Empire, and yet the course of the 
war has caused all the allied countries in turn to 
demand and to reiterate their demand for the in- 
dependence of Poland. That Poland had many 
friends in these countries who still regarded the 
partition she suffered in the 18th century, when 
her territory was divided between Prussia, Aus- 
tria and Russia was a monstrous injustice, that 
there were many who regarded the confirmation 
of those partitions at the Congress of Vienna in 
1815 as a crime of international import, is per- 
fectly true, but it could not be (nor was it) merely 
the reparation of an ancient wrong on which the 



POLAND AND MITTEL-EUROPA 83 

Allies so strenuously and repeatedly insisted. 
They demanded this, one and all, not primarily 
as a belated act of justice, nor, perhaps, primarily 
as the right of nations to a national existence, but 
as a measure of future defence against Germany, 
for Poland is a vitally essential part of the break- 
water which they must erect against the hammer- 
ings of the Mittel-Europa billows. Without such 
a breakwater, without such a wall against the 
encroachments of the hungriest sea that ever beat 
upon a coast, the world will undoubtedly be bat- 
tered into wreckage, and eventually be sub- 
merged. Even as at the end of the Gotterdam- 
merung the Rhine rises in flood, and Walhalla is 
consumed with fire, even so will the tide of German 
domination spread over the world, and the free 
nations and the palaces of civilisation will be 
burned in the hell-fire of Prussian militarism. 



CHAPTER II 

Poland under the Paetitions 

The claims of the Poles themselves to be re- 
united into an independent kingdom rest on his- 
torical and ethnographical grounds which it is 
necessary to sta^te briefly in order that these 
claims may be appreciated and understood. Little 
as they or the basis on which they rest are known 
in England, it is the duty of the Allies, so the 
champions of Polish union and independence as- 
sert, to recognise and act on them, since they have 
repeatedly insisted on the rights of all nations to 
their national territory. The Allies for instance 
demand the retrocession of Alsace and Lorraine 
to France, although the present possession of 
those provinces by Germany is a matter altogether 
outside the present war. But those provinces, 
plucked from France in 1870 are rightfully 
French, and must be re-united to France just as 
certainly as Belgium must be given back to the 
Belgians. In the same way, they contend, there 
are certain provinces in Germany, Austria and 

34 



POLAND UNDER THE PARTITIONS 35 

Russia, which for historical and ethnographical 
reasons mnst be united and restored to form an 
independent Kingdom of Poland. They are in- 
habited by a Polish population, which is quite dis- 
tinct from the various nations who have parti- 
tioned its territories among themselves, and the 
fact that Poland has suffered so long under this 
wrongful appropriation which was finally con- 
firmed more than a century ago does not abrogate 
or dilute the justice of the claim. A national in- 
justice does not lapse with the mere passage of 
time, if present conditions still render it unjust. 
It cannot, like a right of way, be established and 
legalized by mere usage. And this particular in- 
justice has not lapsed, because the territories of 
ancient Poland, now for more than a hundred 
years divided among the ambient powers, are for 
the most part still Polish in blood, in language, 
in sentiment, and in religion. The Polish race has 
neither died out, nor has it been merged in the 
blood of the nations who have appropriated its 
territory. It exists to-day more numerous and 
more conscious of its national existence than ever 
before. Among other symptoms of this we may 
note the fact that apart from what is known as 
the Golden age of Polish literature in the 16th 
Century; the whole of Poland's artistic and lit- 



36 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

erary adiievements have blossomed after the 
partition. 

Briefly then the historical grounds on which 
these claims rest are as follows; they are matters 
of fact, not of theory or political expediency, and 
as far as they go are indisputable. Up to the year 
1772 when the first partition of Poland occurred 
it was a state of great extent with a sea-board on 
the Baltic, and a united realm, embracing not only 
what is now known as the Kingdom of Poland in 
Russia, but stretching eastwards as far as the 
Dnieper, and including the north-west and south- 
west provinces of Russia, i.e., the governments of 
Kovno, Vilna, Grodno, Minsk, Mohileff, Vitebsk, 
Volhynia, Podolia, Kieif.* In Austria-Hungary 

* The town of Kieff itself was not Polish in 1772. 

it included Galicia and originally Austrian Silesia 
(Teschen) ; in Germany, so-called Royal Prussia 
(West Prussia and Ermland) and Posen. The 
whole course of the Vistula lay within its fron- 
tiers from its rise in the Carpathians to its de- 
bouchment at Dantzig, which was a Polish port. 
East Prussia also had been originally a fief of 
Poland, and the HohenzoUerns of Brandenburg 
vassals of its king. Early in the 17th century, 
however (1611), when Sigismund III was on the 
Polish throne. East Prussia ceased to pay its 



POLAND UNDER THE PARTITIONS 37 

tribute-money and Poland was in too weak a state 
to enforce it. From that date therefore, until 
the partitions Eastern Prussia was an island, so 
to speak, in Poland, severed by the Polish terri- 
tory on the Vistula from Brandenburg. 

For some century and a half before the first 
partition of Poland in 1772, the country had been 
weakly governed, and, as to-day, was split up by 
many internal antagonisms, sedulously nourished 
and fostered by Germany. This no doubt con- 
tributed to her incapacity for a vigorous national 
existence, but what really decided her fate, was the 
international condition of Europe at the epoch 
when the partitions were made. England and 
France to whose interests it was then to prevent 
the partitions, which as we can see now, were the 
germ which has since developed into the Mittel- 
Europa policy, were strongly antagonistic, and 
Frederick the Great, who was the prime mover in 
the partition of 1772 was England's ally. Thus the 
possible interference of the Western Powers in 
this partition was removed. On the other side of 
Poland was Russia, who for the time being made 
common cause with Prussia, and secured her own 
share. The two following partitions were con- 
temporaneous with the disorganization caused by 
the French Revolution, and by them Poland, as a 



38 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

nation, completely disappeared from the map of 
Europe. Then followed the Napoleonic wars, in 
which for a time Eussia was in extreme peril, and 
it is highly interesting to note that even as in 
1914 when Rnssia was in peril from German arms, 
Polish reunion was promised by the Grand Duke 
Nicholas, so, when the French peril threatened 
Russia, a hundred years before, Prince Michael 
Oginski in 1802 issued a proclamation to Poland 
signed by Alexander I. strangely similar to that 
of the Grand Duke Nicholas speaking with the 
authority of Nicholas 11. Yet perhaps there is 
little strangeness about it, for similar circum- 
stances evoked it. It ran as follows: 

^ ' Poles' ! I, as at the head of a nation which, 
like yourselves is descended from the valiant 
Slavs, as one who has sworn to fight to the 
last drop of blood for the integrity of my 
country, for its honour and independence, and 
as chief of the Army ... as a monarch full 
of desire that Poland should form a sure 
bulwark for Russia, I hereby declare before 
heaven and earth that I will rebuild and re- 
store the Kingdom of Poland, and calling 
forth the aid of Almighty God, I put on my 
head the Polish crown, a separate crown, but 



POLAND UNDER THE PARTITIONS 39 

through my person connected with the Rus- 
sian empire . . . and on that basis I will 
rule, govern and cooperate with you to secure 
and establish your happiness/' 

These were fair promises, but Poland, hereby 
completing her ruin, allied herself to Napoleon, 
and when in 1815 the Congress of Vienna met, it 
confirmed the partition. Prussia was formally 
granted such part of the Ancient state of Poland 
as is still hers, Austria obtained Galicia, and 
Russia the rest, and from that year till to-day 
Poland has been a nation without one yard of 
territory of its own, but has preserved its na- 
tional language, its national sentiment, and its 
national religion, which is Roman Catholic. Thus 
it remained until, immediately after the outbreak 
of the present war, the Grand Duke Nicholas pro- 
claimed once more that the territories of Poland, 
split up between the warring nations should be 
reunited. But for the one remaining year in which 
Poland was in possession of Russia, the Govern- 
ment took no single step to redeem the promise 
then made, nor exerted themselves to convince 
the Poles of their sincerity. Subsequently we 
shall see in more detail what purpose lay behind 
that promise, and estimate its real value. 



40 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

»- — — 1 

During these ninety-nine years, from the Con- 
gress of Vienna up to the outbreak of the Euro- 
pean war, the inhabitants of the dismembered Po- 
land, shared up between Germany, Austria and 
Russia suffered diverse treatment at the hands of 
the annexing Powers. They were promised at 
the Congress that they should enjoy independent 
political organizations, certain national rights and 
certain economical privileges, including, for in- 
stance, free navigation of the whole course of the 
Vistula. These promises were variously inter- 
preted by the three nations in whose hands it was 
placed to carry them out, and as might be ex- 
pected, the fulfilment of them was strongly col- 
oured by the national characteristics of their in- 
terpreters. In order to understand the feelings 
of the Poles at large on the partition of their 
people among three different nations, it is neces- 
sary to recount briefly the treatment they expe- 
rienced at the hands of each. 

From 1815 to 1830 the inhabitants of that part 
of Poland which fell to Prussia's share had noth- 
ing to complain of except the outrage of the act 
of annexation itself. They had a Polish regent, 
Prince Anthony Radziwill, the possession and 
authority of the Polish nobles was upheld, their 
religion was respected and government posts were 



POLAND UNDER THE PARTITIONS ' 41 

given to them. The Polish language was taught 
in schools, and in the administration of the coun- 
try it was used equally with German. But in 1830 
occurred the Polish revolution in the Kingdom 
of Poland, which, by the partition, went to Rus- 
sia, and for fear of a similar insurrection, the 
liberal policy of Prussia was changed for a far 
more rigid Germanization. Prince Radziwill was 
replaced by a German, Flottvell, who was made 
President of the Duchy of Posen. 

With the object of smothering the national 
spirit, the power of the Polish nobility and clergy 
was curtailed, the German language began to take 
the place of Polish in schools and public business, 
special encouragements were given to Prussian 
settlers in the country, and the Polish officials 
were replaced by Prussians. For a while under 
Frederick William IV. (1840) a more liberal pol- 
icy was pursued, but an insurrectionary move- 
ment in 1848 caused to be administered to the 
Poles a redoubled dose of Germanization. This 
continued to be the fixed policy of Bismarck, who 
avowedly did all he could to stamp out any sense 
of national existence in the Poles, and to absorb 
them in his work of uniting Germany. Religion 
and language are two of the strongest ties which 
hold together those of the same blood, and Bis- 



42 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

marck set to work to loosen these, even as did the 
Young Turks when they ordered that a transla- 
tion into Turkish should be made of the Koran, 
to be used in mosques, and that the prayer for 
the Caliphate should be recited no longer in 
Arabic* Polish bishops were imprisoned, 
church-schools and charitable institutions man- 
aged by the clergy were closed, endowments were 
confiscated, and parishes deprived of their pas- 
tors. The tie of language was similarly dissolved, 
and between 1870 and 1874 Polish was no longer 
permitted to be taught in second-grade schools, 
and German took its place, so that the next gen- 
eration it was hoped, would grow up without any 
literary knowledge, at any rate, of their own 
tongue. German was similarly made the sole of- 
ficial language, and the whole of the administra- 
tion of the country, legal and political, was car- 
ried on in that tongue. Simultaneously Poles were 
prohibited from holding any government post, and 
the names of Polish towns were Germanized. 

The Polish population, as was found by the 
census of 1880, was increasing more rapidly than 

* Bismarck 's policy with regard to this continues to this day, 
for as late as 1917 there was a strong protest made by Germans 
in Posen against religion even being taught to Polish children in 
their native tongue. 



POLAND UNDER THE PARTITIONS 46 

the German in Prussian Poland, and fresh steps 
were necessary for its suppression. All Poles, 
subjects of Austria and Russia, were therefore 
expelled from Prussian Poland, and in 1886 Prus- 
sia voted the sum of 100 million marks for the 
purchase of land from Polish proprietors, and 
the settlement on these lands of Germans. Next 
year the complete elimination of the Polish lan- 
guage from all schools was effected and German 
was made the only language for religious instruc- 
tion of Polish children. With the dismissal of 
Bismarck in 1890 the rigidity of these restrictions 
was relaxed for a few years, but in 1894 an even 
more active propaganda for the Germanization of 
Prussian Poland was organized by the ^*Ost- 
marken Verein," or Hakatist Association (so 
called after the initials of its founders Hanne- 
mann, Kennemann, and Tiedemann). Another 
100 million marks was voted in the Prussian Diet 
for the purchase of Polish lands and the settle- 
ment thereon of German Colonists, and these were 
introduced into villages in solid blocks with their 
mayor and their Protestant church. By the aid 
of the state grants these settlers acquired their 
land at ludicrously low prices, but were not per- 
mitted to part with it again to Polish proprietors, 
and a couple more regulations rounded off the gen- 



44 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

eral policy, the total effect of which was to forbid 
Poles either to acquire land or to erect houses. A 
further grant of 125,000,000 marks was voted in 
1908 for fresh acquisition of land and the estab- 
lishment of German settlers. Territorially the 
result of these measures was entirely satisfactory 
from a German point of view, for in 1912, a quar- 
ter of the whole territory nationally Polish and 
inhabited by Poles was owned by Germany. 

But neither these restrictions and prohibitions 
nor Bismarck ^s declared policy directed against 
the destruction of Polish nationality have been 
able to render moribund the inherent vitality of 
this nation, or to extinguish the flame of its in- 
dividual life. The Prussian Poles organized 
against the hostility of the Ostmarken Verein a 
system of defence for their land, their language, 
and their stability, and if we take for considera- 
tion a series of years, say from 1870 to 1900, we 
find that they developed national banking corpo- 
rations in such perfection that they were declared 
by German economists to constitute an internal 
peril. Similarly in spite of legislation the land in 
Polish hands was larger at the end of that period 
than at the beginning, while, most significant of 
all, the population of Poles in Prussian Poland 
increased more rapidly than that of the nation 



POLAND UNDER THE PARTITIONS 45 

that aimed at submerging them. The fact had 
already been disclosed by the German census of 
1880, and by 1900 the percentage of Germans in 
Posen had decreased from being 45 per cent, of 
the whole population to 38 per cent. National 
consciousness and like force alike proved them- 
selves superior to repressive legislation. 

Such in brief has been the hundred years' his- 
tory of that part of Poland which, with promises 
of liberty and autonomy, was assigned to Prussia. 
The policy of Mittel-Europa has striven (and has 
largely succeeded) in stripping it of its lands, its 
religion and its tongue, patching the rents with 
German fabric. It is not much to be wondered at 
that when in November 1916 the Central Empires 
proclaimed the independence of Russian Poland, 
which they still jointly occupy, its inhabitants put 
but little faith in the significance of the boon, for 
they were familiar with the interpretation placed 
by the Germans on the word independence. Their 
suspicions have been amply justified. 

The three partitions had given to Russia certain 
Eastern Polish provinces mentioned above* which 
had formed part of the ancient republic, and by 
the Congress of Vienna this arrangement was con- 

* These were Kovno^ Vilna, Grrodno, Vitebsk, MoMleff, Minsk, 
Volhyma, Podolia, and Kieff. 



46 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

firmed and the district known as the Kingdom of 
Poland was added. A constitution was granted 
it which assured it of equality of citizenship with 
Russian subjects, liberty, its own language, to be 
taught in schools and to be used officially, and a 
national government consisting of a Senate and 
a Chamber of Deputies. The observation of these 
pledges was of the shortest duration, and Russia 
soon began infringing them and depriving Poland 
of any semblance of independence or self-govern- 
ment. The effect of this was the insurrection of 
1830, which ended in the victory of the Russian 
armies and the capture of Warsaw. Russia there- 
upon deprived the Kingdom of Poland of its con- 
stitution and of its army, and put at the head of 
the administration a Russian general, Paskevitch, 
who ruled the country by martial law. All litera- 
ture dealing with subjects calculated to keep alive 
feelings of patriotism among Poles was sup- 
pressed, and the national church was deprived of 
her position as state church. 

The accession of Alexander 11. in 1855 saw a 
more liberal policy introduced. A Council of ad- 
ministration was established again, Polish was 
taught in schools, and Polish officials were em- 
ployed in the civil administration. But after the 
second insurrection of 1863 the separate adminis- 



POLAND UNDER THE PARTITIONS 47 

tration of the Kingdom of Poland was abolished, 
the country was finally incorporated into the Rus- 
sian empire, Poles were expelled from all official 
posts, and their places taken by Russians sent 
from Russia, and all shadow of self-government 
and semblance of liberty was withdrawn. The 
possessions of the church were confiscated, com- 
munication with the Holy See was forbidden, and 
in 1874 the rites of the orthodox church were made 
compulsory. Polish schools were suppressed, the 
Polish language forbidden in schools and as the 
official language, and in a word the whole of that 
part of the kingdom of Poland which had fallen 
to Russia was completely Russified so far as laws 
and the penalties for breaking them could ensure 
the process. 

In Lithuania, once also belonging to Poland, this 
second insurrection was visited with even greater 
severity under the administration of General Mu- 
ravieff (suitably styled ''The Hangman' '), who 
was given unlimited power to punish the insur- 
gents as he chose, and used that power with the 
utmost ability of his savage mind. He treated the 
Poles as enemies of the state, he shot the ring- 
leaders, he destroyed whole Polish villages and 
sent their inhabitants to Siberia, he suppressed all 
Polish papers, he prohibited the use of the Polish 



48 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

language in public altogether, even in conversation 
in the streets, and in particular he inflicted heavy 
fines on landowners and clergy who did not fall un- 
der direct suspicion of having had any part in the 
insurrection, in order to render them more power- 
less for the future. The proof, even the suspicion 
of complicity, was not required: perfectly inno- 
cent men were deprived of the power of doing 
again what they had never done at all. No Pole 
was permitted to acquire land in Lithuania or 
Little Eussia, so that any Pole who wished to sell 
his hand, must sell it only to a Eussian: this 
measure was supplemented by a further ukase in 
1887 which provided that if any Pole not being a 
Eussian subject, inherited real estate in Lithuania 
or Little Eussia, he had to sell it within two years. 
Catholic churches were transformed into orthodox, 
orthodox monks were put in possession of Uniat 
monasteries. 

Now revolutions are dangerous things, and the 
state, among whose peoples occur such risings as 
the Polish insurrections of 1830 and 1863, is per- 
fectly right to put them down, for the state's first 
duty is to ensure its own safety. If it is a liberal 
and beneficent government, it will remedy the in- 
justices that have given rise to discontent, but it 
is primarily its business to suppress what is dan- 



POLAND UNDER THE PARTITIONS 49 

gerous to its own existence. But in the case of 
Russian Poland it must be remembered that it was 
the disregard of the Russian Government for the 
promises which it had made to its Polish acquisi- 
tions that directly produced these risings : it had 
shewn itself an irresponsible autocracy to whom 
its own treaties and obligations meant no more 
than they mean now-a-days to Germany, and hav- 
ing put down those risings, Russia in no way re- 
dressed the wrongs that had occasioned them, but 
aggravated the burdens and disabilities of the 
people to whom she had promised rights and lib- 
erty. In the democratic crisis that followed the 
Japanese war, it is true, certain concessions were 
made to the Poles, certain liberties granted them — 
they sent, for instance, thirty-four members to 
the Duma (a number reduced in 1907 to twelve) — 
but, broadly speaking, during the hundred years 
that succeeded the partitions, neither Russia nor 
Prussia shewed any sincere intention of fulfilling 
the obligations they had entered into after the 
Congress of Vienna, but both alike pursued the 
settled policy of extinguishing the national con- 
sciousness of the people whose territories they 
had appropriated. In this, though they tried to 
loose all the ties which bind a people together, 
they have utterly failed. The national vitality of 



50 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

the Poles, as a race, has survived the century of 
bondage, and exists to-day with no less vigour 
than it did when those partitions were made. The 
tie of blood has proved to be insoluble by oppres- 
sion, and the shedding of it has but cemented its 
coherence. 

The Poles of the province of Galicia, which was 
assigned to Austria, fared no better, up to the year 
1867, than their fellow-countrymen in Prussia and 
Russia. The most rigid system of Germanic bu- 
reaucracy was brought to bear on them, and they 
suffered barbarous oppression. Economically also 
Austria worked for the ruin of the country.* She 
suppressed both the natural resources of the coun- 
try and the industries of its inhabitants. But 
after Austria's defeat in the war of 1866, she had 
to reform her internal policy and grant rights to 
her subject races and from that date the condi- 
tions of the Poles of Galicia were greatly amelio- 
rated. Polish, for instance, is the official language 
of the province, and is taught in Polish schools, 
and the fact that Austria belongs to the Roman 

* A typical instance of this is the way in which she treated the 
cloth industry. Cloth made in the country for consumption in the 
country had to be taken to Vienna, paying an import duty on the 
wa,jy to be stamped there and taken back, after paying another 
duty, to Galicia. Production was thus rendered impossible, and 
the factories were closed. 



POLAND UNDER THE PARTITIONS 51 

communion has assured religious liberty for the 
Poles, who have their Archbishop at Lemberg, and 
three Bishops at Cracow, Tarnow, and Przsmysl. 
They have freedom of access to Rome, and are ap- 
pointed jointly by the Holy See and the Emperor. 
Galicia is represented in the Chamber of Deputies 
at Vienna (which consists of 545 members) by 106 
members, of whom 28 are Little Russians, the rest 
Poles. The Minister of Galicia who has a seat in 
the Cabinet at Vienna, is always a Pole, and in the 
central administration at Vienna about seven per 
cent, of the officials are of Polish birth. Galicia 
enjoys an autonomy, though a limited one, with 
a Diet of its own under a Marshal, 73 per cent, of 
the members of which are Poles. The Crown is 
represented by a Lieutenant-General, who since 
1849 up to the outbreak of war has always been a 
Pole. Since then the appointment has been held 
by two Germans in succession, j&rst General Col- 
lard and then General Diller. Economical exploi- 
tation, however, still continues ; there are, for in- 
stance, differential tariffs and railways, facilitat- 
ing imports from Austria to Galicia and penaliz- 
ing imports from Galicia into Austria. 

Such in brief have been the fortunes and mis- 
fortunes of the nation which for more than a hun- 
dred years has been dismembered and assigned 



52 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

to its three neighbours. Two of them, Bussia and 
Germany, have, as we have seen, made no pretence 
of granting the autonomy they promised to the 
people of the territories which they received, and 
up till the outbreak of the war, Lithuania and the 
kingdom of Poland have not enjoyed the autonomy 
that was guaranteed them more than have the Pol- 
ish inhabitants of Posen or Royal Prussia. In 
both cases the policy of the annexing nations has 
been to absorb, to merge, to kill the consciousness 
of separate nationality. As far as legal disabili- 
ties, lingual suppression, religious bondage go, 
they have done their utmost. But it is one thing 
to stifle the expressions of national feeling, and 
quite another to extinguish the spirit that ani- 
mates them, and in that regard they have signally 
failed. Austria alone for the last fifty years has 
acquitted herself of her obligations, and has 
granted to Galicia a fair equality of rights with 
the other races who compose her patch-work Em- 
pire, and a reasonable measure of autonomy. But 
it is not equality of rights among the subjects of 
ditferent nations that the Polish National spirit 
desires. It does not ask for decent treatment at 
the hands of Germany or Russia or Austria. What 
it demands, and what the governments of the 
Entente have repeatedly promised it, is that it 



POLAND UNDER THE PARTITIONS 53 

should be reunited and independent: it does not 
crave indulgence, but its due. On the grounds of 
the rights of smaller nations to exist, it claims that 
the territories into which Germany, Russia and 
Austria have divided it, should be reunited into 
a sovereign and independent state. But it is not 
merely as an act of belated justice that the Allies 
have insisted both in separate and in joint pro- 
nouncements on the execution of this : had there 
been, for instance, no European war, for other 
reasons, it cannot be supposed that any of them 
would have provoked it in order to give Poland the 
rights which they now claim for her. The sig- 
nificance of Poland to them is in relation to the 
menace of Germany's Mittel-Europa policy. 



CHAPTER III 

Poland and the Entente 

As we have already seen, England, France, Italy 
and America have repeatedly declared, by the 
mouths of those officially pronouncing the will of 
their respective governments, that the union and 
independence of Poland are among the objects for 
which they are to-day waging war on the Central 
Empires. Russia though no longer a member of 
the Entente, since her bastard government of the 
moment has torn up her treaty with her allies and 
has signed a separate peace with Germany, has 
also in the days before her collapse declared for 
the same policy, for the Grand Duke Nicholas in 
August, 1914, proclaimed the unity of Poland im- 
plying thereby the union of the Kingdom of Po- 
land with Prussian and Austrian Poland, while the 
revolutionary government announced the inde- 
pendence of Russian Poland in March, 1917, there- 
by relinquishing Russia's sovereignty over the 
Kingdom. Since then Russia has ceased to exist 
as a member of the Entente, and indeed, tempo- 

54 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 55 

rarily, as a nation at all, and so we may take it, 
without provoking argnment, that the Entente is 
unanimous for Polish unity and independence. 

Meantime, owing to the military situation none 
of the Entente powers have been in a position to 
accomplish this aim, which necessarily implies the 
total defeat of the Central Powers, without which 
neither Germany will give up a yard of Prussian 
Poland, nor Austria of Austrian Poland, nor 
either of them a yard of what once was Russian 
Poland concerning the partitioning of which be- 
tween them, irrespective of Polish feeling on the 
subject, they have held and are still holding pro- 
longed debates, occupying it in the interval with 
Prussian callousness. Whatever solution they in- 
tend to adopt, they will not unless compelled to do 
so by force, whether of internal trouble or military 
defeat or both, suffer their grip on any part of 
what was once Polish territory to be relaxed. Till 
then, a starved and subject country, sick with the 
deferred hope of autonomy which has been re- 
peatedly promised to it, is in their hands to misuse 
as they think fit. 

Now, broadly speaking, there can be no doubt, 
if any meaning is to be attached to words, what 
the general intentions of the Powers of the En- 
tente are. They intend (as indeed they have de- 



56 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

clared) to unite those portions of Central Europe 
which are contiguous to each other, and in which 
the Poles are indubitably the predominant nation- 
ality, into one state, and to give that state inde- 
pendence in a political, an economic and a military 
sense. They intend also to give it access to the 
Baltic, without which it cannot hope to prosper or 
maintain itself. While the affairs of Eastern 
Europe are in a state of such chaotic flux, it would 
be useless to lay down with any approach to 
definiteness the actual frontiers of the new realm, 
or the territories which it will embrace, but the 
Governments of the Entente have singly and joint- 
ly proclaimed as one of the objects for which we 
are now fighting, the foundation of this new Po- 
land the inhabitants of which may properly be 
described as Polish in blood, culture and sympa- 
thies. Districts lying contiguous to each other 
and to the once-Russian Kingdom of Poland will 
be united to form this free and reconstructed 
realm, which will have in round fignires a purely 
Polish population of about twenty-one million peo- 
ple. Some claim that the total will prove to be 
higher than that: some estimate it as less, but 
this figure may be taken as sufficiently correct. 
Historically, also, the new Poland has a valid 
claim to these territories that will be assigned 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 57 

to her, since up to the time of the three partitions, 
confirmed and modified by the Congress of Vienna, 
they formed part of the ancient Republic. If this 
is not the clear and obvious signification of the 
repeated declarations of Mr. Balfour, Mr. Asquith, 
Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Bonar Law, MM. Briand, 
Clemenceau, Ribot, Pichon, Signor Orlando, and 
Mr. Wilson it is impossible to guess what their 
signification is. Before that can be accomplished 
German arms must suffer a complete defeat, but 
unless it is accomplished, the Mittel-Europa policy 
will have won over the Entente and especially over 
England, Germany's chief opponent in this little 
matter of world-wide dominion, a victory of the 
most decisive nature. For should Poland remain 
in a condition of dependence on the Central Pow- 
ers — whom for the future it will be truer and more 
convenient to call simply ^'Germany'' — and be 
obliged to lean on them, there will no longer be 
possible any bar or obstacle to the victorious ad- 
vance of Germany eastwards. The Ukraine has 
declared peace, so too has Rumania; Bulgaria is 
her ally, Turkey is in her pocket, and she can pene- 
trate eastward to Bagdad, until those countries 
are soaked with her influence and domination as 
a sponge is soaked with water, and when *^Der 
Tag" comes again, she can sever our connection 



58 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

with India and Egypt and the British Empire will 
be hers. The Black Sea with its main ports is al- 
ready now a German lake, as completely as if it 
were a mountain tarn in the Black Forest : and its 
main ports Varna, Costanza. Odessa, Batonm, 
Trebizond, and the key to them all, namely Con- 
stantinople are controlled by Germany. In the 
north the Baltic already, as the map stands, is a 
German lake, and no less is the Adriatic Sea, if 
Trieste, and the Austrian ports on the East Coast 
with their maze of defending and defensible islands 
remain in the hands of the Central Empires. Even 
the most ostrich-like of politicians when they con- 
sider this, can hardly miss the significance of 
Count Czernin's pronouncement when in declaring 
for the freedom of the seas, he expressly and ex- 
plicitly stated that the freedom of the narrow seas 
is not included in the freedom of the seas. In 
other words, the three seas which are of vital im- 
portance to Germany as bases are to remain her 
private and inviolable harbours which she can 
close at any time, and, when she desires, project 
a fleet from them. 

But to make her road completely open it is es- 
sential to her that Poland, in the sense of the 
words in which the statesmen of all countries of 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 59 

the Entente have used it, namely a United Poland, 
consisting of some union of Russian, German and 
Austrian Poland, should be under the control of 
Berlin either directly or indirectly through Vienna. 
It is equally essential to the aims of the Entente 
that it should not. If, in fact, at the end of the 
war, Posen and West Prussia remain in German 
hands, Galicia in Austrian hands and the King- 
dom of Poland, whether joined to Galicia or not 
(as by the Austrian solution), in the control either 
of Austria or Germany, then, whether or not Ger- 
many gives back Belgium with suitable repara- 
tion, and restores Alsace and Lorraine to France, 
the Entente will have lost the war. Indeed, so 
vital to the interests of the Central Empires is the 
retention of Poland, that M. Herve (evidently with 
information behind him) has suggested that Aus- 
tria would be wdlling even to cede Trieste and 
Pola to the Italians on condition of the Entente 
consenting to see the Kingdom of Poland joined to 
Galicia under a Habsburg suzerainty. This junc- 
tion of the Kingdom of Poland with Galicia, is 
knowm as the ^^ Austrian Solution," and has been 
a policy debated between Germany and Austria 
since they occupied Poland in 1915. It is treated 
of in detail in Part II of this book. 
Now it must clearly be understood that it is not 



60 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 



merely nor even primarily in the cause of abstract 
justice that the pronouncements of the govern- 
ments of the Entente have stated and reiterated 
their declaration with regard to Poland. A great 
wrong was undoubtedly done to the country when 
by the partitions and the Congress of Vienna more 
than a hundred years ago, a free nation was di- 
vided and wiped off the map. But the Entente did 
not go to war in order to redress that ancient 
wrong, though undoubtedly one of the main rea- 
sons, indeed the main reason, why they now cannot 
arrive at some basis from which peace-discussion 
could arise, is that they will not accept any such 
solution of the Polish question as implies unlim- 
ited German control over these territories. Nor 
is there any conceivable cause why Germany 
should yield in this matter until she is forced to, 
for the creation of such an independent Poland as 
the Entente demands, will be the most serious 
check that could possibly be dealt to her Mittel- 
Europa policy, and also implies an immense loss 
of territory for herself. 

The historical claims then of Poland to these ter- 
ritories does not concern the Entente or the ob- 
jects for which they are fighting. At the most it 
is a supplementary consideration marginally 
noted at the edge of the real question at issue. 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 61 

The historical claim is admitted, but it does not 
exercise weight. Calais once belonged to Eng- 
land, Syracuse once belonged to Athens, but no- 
body proposes to restore them to England and to 
Greece because they once belonged to them, and 
the Entente do not propose to restore either Ger- 
man or Austrian territories to Poland for the 
similar reason. But the ethnographical reason 
is a very different matter : the population of these 
lands is neither Russian nor German nor Aus- 
trian, but Polish. One nation inhabits them, and, 
as a nation, it has a right according to the pro- 
gramme of the Entente, to a national existence, 
for it has shown itself for centuries able to co- 
here and govern itself, and it was a series of unjust 
provisions that tore it apart. And this accept- 
ance by the Entente of this ethnographical claim 
coincides with the necessity of securing a check 
to the Mittel-Europa expansion of Germany. It 
is essential for the peace of the world and the 
integrity of the British Empire that there should 
exist just' here a strong state that does not lean 
on Germany, but shall be in itself a bar to German 
absorption eastwards, and shall naturally find its 
orientation and its development independent of 
and opposed to Teutonic penetration. At present 
as we all know and deplore, there is chaos east 



62 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

of Poland, and to lean on chaos is to be engulfed 
in the whirlwind. But no sane thinker, unless he 
believes in the sanity of Bolsheviks can doubt that 
some day out of chaos and outer darkness a light 
shall shine again, and a call of a people's will 
shall be heard, and when fire and tempest have 
passed shall come the '^ still small voice'' for which 
the prophet hearkened. Socialistic, revolutionary 
against the order of those things that have been 
swept away, it will no doubt be, but what it will 
not be is the mad destructive hurricane which at 
Dresent is the only manifestation of the power be- 
hind it. Unless Germany wins the war, there will 
be a democratic Russia, sympathetic in blood and 
in constitution to a democratic Poland. Out of 
the disintegration that Germany has made in the 
nation of her foe, will arise order again, but it 
must not be order as established by Germany. It 
is vital and essential to the peace of the world, un- 
less by the *^ peace of the world" we imply a com- 
plete Germanic domination of the world, that a 
united and independent Poland should voice the 
will of a free people, and that her cry of ^ ^Liberty" 
should be re-echoed by Russia. Anything that 
makes for discord between the new Russia and the 
new Poland is a nail driven into the coffin that 
contains the corpse of a free world. 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 63 

It is necessary to descend into the bewildering 
arena (mixed metaphors are the only way to ex- 
press it) of Polish politics, in order to under- 
stand the feeling of the country itself with regard 
to its fate. That country at the present moment 
lies in the hand of Germany, but not ^'tame as a 
pear late basking over the wall," but more like 
a bomb with a time-fuse attached to it. It lies 
there for the moment in Germany's hand, quite 
quiet, since it cannot extricate itself from that iron 
grip, but it has not only the potentiality, but the 
necessity for explosion. Never was there a coun- 
try so crammed with the chemicals that make the 
explosive mixture. Could a plebiscite be taken 
not only of the ^'Kingdom of Poland," but of 
Prussian and Austrian Poland as well, there is 
no shadow of doubt that an overwhelming major- 
ity would elect for the formation of a national 
unit, independent of Russia, of Austria and of 
Germany, that should form a united State of 
Poles. Such (and the numbers that would make 
up that choice are quite incontrovertible) is the 
will of the Poland that the Governments of the 
Entente have declared that they will call into 
being. If the Poles of Russian, Prussian and Aus- 
trian Poland could be given voting papers, there 
would be so great a majority for the declared in- 



64 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

tentions of the Entente, that the minority would 
rightly be unrepresented. But of the unrepre- 
sented minority the most numerous as the most 
powerful factor would not by nationality be Polish 
or Austrian, or Russian or Prussian at all, but 
Jewish. The Jews, of whom there are very large 
numbers, as will subsequently be shown, both in 
Russian and Austrian Poland (in Prussian Poland 
their numbers are very insignificant) cannot pos- 
sibly be expected to support the union rather than 
the disinegration of Poland, and the cause of this 
is so simple that it hardly needs to be pointed out. 
They have no national affinity for Poland at all, 
nor is there the smallest reason why they should 
have. Racially, they were detested by the Poles, 
and they were abhorred and persecuted by the 
Russians during the century in which Poland was 
under Russian government. But since Germany 
has been in occupation their lot has been vastly 
ameliorated and their yoke lightened. She has 
given them greater liberty and rights than they 
ever enjoyed in Russian Poland before; she has 
admitted them to the Council of State, she has 
founded Jewish schools, and above all she has 
given them ^^ business.'' In both Poland and Rus- 
sia she has employed the Jews on the mission of 
disintegration with the success that up till now 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 65 

has always attended the policy of Mittel-Europa, 
and to-day the Judaic interest in the question of 
Poland cannot, in the very nature of things, be 
pro-Polish. Pour le hon motif, that is to say, for 
the interest of their nation, they support the Ger- 
man interest here, there and elsewhere, on patri- 
otic grounds.* They have no national territory at 
stake; they are but the mistletoe, a strong para- 
sitic growth, on other trees, and, as regards Po- 
land, they have selected the tree that they con- 
sider most likely to give them nutriment. That 
tree is G-ermany. Here, on behalf of the Entente's 
declaration, is another reason for cutting down 
the tree. But better still would it be to convince 
the Jewish element in Poland that it would be more 
advantageous to root itself in the tree of the En- 
tente, than on the world-ash of the Central Pow- 
ers. It is, indeed, essential for the prosperity and 
coherence of the new Poland, that for the shrill 
antagonism that to-day exists between Poles and 
Jews there should be substituted the concord and 
community of interest that will make them friends. 
Mittel-Europa is not yet quite entitled to sing 

* In Eussia similarly they have played Germany 's game, both 
by aiding and abetting the Bolsheviks while they were Germany's 
tools, and by persistently making bad blood between the Poles 
there and the Eussians. 



66 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

its Paeans of victory, for the whole world knows 
that the fate of Germany at the present moment, 
hangs on the military operations on the West 
front. Should Germany gain a victory there, or 
even obtain an effective stalemate, her Mittel- 
Europa policy would proceed precisely as she de- 
sires it to proceed. But should Germany sustain 
a smashing defeat there, or a stalemate which 
her internal conditions render ineffective, all her 
policy, whether in East or West, whether Pan- 
German or Mittel-European must topple and fall. 
The Jews in Poland who are a very numerous and 
important body have definitely betted on Germany. 
The Entente has betted against her. WTiile the 
military situation in the West remains unresolved, 
there is no conclusion to be reached. It is only 
necessary to note that the Jews of the whole of 
Poland as an independent united state, have put 
their money on Germany, because they believe that 
Germany will control the destinies of these ter- 
ritories. 

But the Jews in the Kingdom of Poland are not 
only Pro-German but also anti-Polish, and it is 
noticeable that, whereas all Jews in German Po- 
land declare themselves German, when a census 
was taken at Lodz after the German occupation, 
only 2,300 Jews declared themselves Poles, while 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 67 

153,000 declared themselves Jews. The Poles 
claim that originally they were tolerant and hos- 
pitable to Jews, but that in the insurrections of 
1830 and 1863, the latter sided against them with 
the Russians, and that during the last twenty years 
they have consistently organized themselves as a 
separate nationality, shewing marked hostility to 
the Poles. About 1907 they began a boycotting 
policy against Poles, forbidding their country- 
men, for instance, to consult Polish doctors, and 
in 1909 when the Poles proclaimed a boycott of 
German products in Poland, this boycott failed 
because the Jews lent all their support to Ger- 
man commerce. The ill-feeling between the two 
has been steadily on the increase, and came to a 
head when in 1912, at the election of the fourth 
Duma, for which M. Kuckarewski and M. Dmo- 
wski were standing at Warsaw, the Jewish vote 
succeeded in defeating both of them and electing 
their own candidate. This led to a Polish com- 
mercial boycott of Jews, and at present the an- 
tagonism between the two is hostile and fierce. 
The feeling of the Poles towards them is not so 
much anti-Semitic as such, but is the antagonism 
of a race for a foreign and hostile dweller in its 
lands. Germany to-day is in possession of Po- 
land, and the Jews of Poland lean over the shoul- 



68 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

ders of the landlord, protected by his bulky form 
from the hisses and hatred below. For if there is 
one face that the Pole, as a nationalist and patriot 
hates more than the German face, it is the Jewish 
face. Whatever the rights and the wrongs of this 
antagonism are, the antagonism acntely exists, 
and no solution, Austrian or otherwise will dis- 
solve it. The Pole believes that the Jew is at 
present completely antagonistic to his national 
ideal, unless it is a German ideal. But for Poland 
to become a united independent state, not fearing 
German penetration, it is essential that a liberal 
policy towards Jews should convince the latter 
that their interests are cared for and appreciated 
by the national government. 

(ii) Polish Parties 

In the shifting kaleidoscope of Polish politics a 
party is formed one day to dissolve or amalgamate 
itself with another the next, and the trumpetting 
that heralds its birth may only imply that a doz^n 
men who happen to agree with each other have 
after dinner christened themselves by some high- 
sounding name. It would be useless to define the 
vast majority of these parties, to render an ac- 
count of the various shades of opinion which are 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 69 

i-^^— ^^"^^^ ^■^— ^^^^^— ^-^^■— ^■^■^— ^^■— ^■■^^— ■^^■^-■— ' 

congregated into the Parliamentary terms of Left 
or Right, or explain in what points the Christian 
Democrats, for instance, or the National Federa- 
tion or the Union of Economic Independence who 
form part of the Right differ from each other. 
But three of these groups with their main policies 
must be outlined. 

I. A considerable body of opinion among 
Poles favours the Austrian Solution, that is to say, 
the union of Russian Poland with Galicia form- 
ing an autonomous state under a Habsburg prince. 
The Social Democratic party of Galicia and Silesia 
is identified with this, but the policy of the whole 
group is based on the notion that this is the best 
solution that Poland can possibly hope for, and 
the pillars that support the structure are not love 
of Austria, but hatred of Germany and Russia. 
Its adherents do not believe that an independent 
and united Poland, consisting of German, Rus- 
sian and Austrian Poland, is within the horizons 
of practical politics, and they would prefer to see 
Russian and Austrian Poland under the sceptre 
of the Habsburgs, while Posen and West Prussia 
remain German, rather than that the Kingdom 
of Poland should remain in German grip. But 
they accept this because they consider it the best 
that can be had. The powers of the Entente, it is 



70 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

' — — ■■ — — ■ A 

hardly necessary to state, would never willingly 
consent to such a solution, since it would defeat the 
object for which they are fighting. Poland would 
thus come under the direct control of the Central 
Empires, and though nominally she would enjoy 
autonomy under Austrian suzerainty, she would 
assuredly be fitted into the Mittel-Europa struc- 
ture. For the Dual Monarchy has in fact to-day 
no independent existence. It is Germany and 
Germany alone that keeps it together, and Poland 
partitioned between Germany and Austria, even 
though the Austrian province should be granted a 
large measure of autonomy, would remain a link 
in the chain of Mittel-Europa expansion, a story 
in the structure of the Mittel-Europa house. 

Germany hitherto has never quite admitted the 
Austrian solution, though on several occasions 
since she and Austria have occupied the kingdom 
of Poland she has come near to doing so, and, 
while still they occupy it, may yet do so, for 
though it would remove the kingdom of Poland 
from her direct control, she knows very well that 
she controls the J)ual Monarchy. Indeed her 
domination over Austria would be thereby in- 
creased, for she would no doubt demand as the 
price of her consent that the seats in the Austrian 
Parliament hitherto occupied by Poles should 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 71 

henceforth be occupied by Germans, for the Poles 
wonld no longer have any voice in the Eeichsrat 
but would sit in the assembly of the newly-made 
autonomous state. Germany would thus secure a 
preponderance in the Austrian Parliament over 
the Czech element. These and other points have 
from time to time inclined her to the Austrian 
solution with the condition attached that she 
should annex to Germany a certain portion of the 
Eussian Kingdom of Poland, leaving the greater 
part to be joined to Galicia. 

But on the whole she has hitherto considered 
that the disadvantages to her personally of the 
Austrian Solution outweigh the advantages. 
Should the greater part of Poland pass into Aus- 
trian control, it would be Austria who recruited 
her armies from among the Poles, and thus Ger- 
many would not directly obtain the quarries of 
man-power which she would like. The more 
thorough-going Junkers, such as Hindenburg and 
the Crown Prince, are in favour of her annexing 
the Kingdom of Poland herself, directly and open- 
ly, and what probably keeps her back from so 
doing is the knowledge that she would have on her 
hands a turbulent province always ready to break 
into insurrection, for of the nine and a half mil- 
lions of Poles who inhabit it, there is not one who 



72 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

I 

would not protest against such an annexation. 
The fact of her having declared the existence of a 
Polish state with all the creaking machinery of 
the sham Regency Council and the sham Council 
of State, does not for a moment deter her from 
tearing up the Constitution she has granted; what 
does give her pause is her inability to balance pros 
and cons and determine in precisely what solution 
of the Polish problem lies her greatest aggrandise- 
ment. Nor can she at present risk a rupture with 
Austria, and in the meantime the question of the 
appointment of a Regent and the Austrian Solu- 
tion hangs fire. 

II. The second solid party in the affairs of 
Poland is not Polish at all but Jewish. The Jews 
do not compose even one of the twenty-three par- 
ties of Polish opinion or form a bloc in the Council 
of State, and for this reason they are as a rule 
totally overlooked by those who want to estimate 
the values and weights of different sections of 
Polish politics. Without fear of contradiction we 
may say that they are, at the present moment, 
favourable to German aims and interests, and will 
undoubtedly by a grave danger to the stability of 
any future Polish state, unless the long-standing 
quarrel between the Poles and them is recon- 
ciled by liberal and democratic legislation. 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 73 

III. The third main group in Polish politics 
consists of the parties which uphold and work for 
an independent and united Poland. Chief of these 
are the National Democrats who are allied with 
the Realists. The Realists in the main are land- 
owners, and represent the upper classes of Poland. 
They have solid interests there, and their patrio- 
tism is confirmed, or as their opponents say, di- 
luted, by the fact that they have a stake in the 
country. 

But when we come to the National Democrats 
and their allied groups we find for the first time 
in this short analysis of the main Polish parties, 
one that is as solid as the Jews, as well organised 
as any political party, largely dispersed and sev- 
ered from its native land, can be, completely in 
accord in its aims, and representative not only of 
themselves but of many other parties in Poland, 
who would undoubtedly ally themselves to them, if 
they thought that the aims of their policy could 
be realized. These groups have as their entire aim 
the unity and independence of Poland. Their as- 
cendancy in Russia during the years immediately 
preceding the war may be gauged from the fact 
that in the first Duma of 1906 and in the second 
and third Dumas of 1907 they and their supporters 
won all Polish constituencies. In the fourth Duma 



74 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

of 1912 they won all but two, and these two, a 
witness to the growing power of Jews and German 
penetration, were lost by them and won by the 
Jewish interest. One of them was the constitu- 
ency of Warsaw already alluded to. That their 
aims constitute the national aims of the Poles 
taken as a whole to-day was indicated at the elec- 
tions to the National Council in April, 1918, for 
out of 52 * of the elected members no less than 37 
belonged to the Inter-party club of Warsaw, which 
adopts the National Democrat programme as op- 
posed to either the Austrian Solution or any Ger- 
man disposition of the future of the country. It 
is, however, important to remember with regard 
to the significance of those elections, that the depu- 
ties were elected by certain small bodies called 
Dietines, which have no claim to democratic repre- 
sentation, for in the German sphere of occupation 
those Dietines were appointed by Germans. 
Moreover, the Dietines in which the predominant 
vote was Radical or Socialist, abstained altogether 
from taking part in the elections, and thus the 
Inter-party Club, consisting largely of land-own- 
ing Realists had matters its own way. A further 

* According to the Constitution there should have been 55 mem- 
bers elected, but I have not been able to ascertain who the re- 
maining three are. 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 75 

consideration is that the Realists, without being in 
the smallest degree pro-German, have yet this 
common bond with them, namely that both are 
equally concerned in resisting any revolutionary 
movement like that which lately caused the col- 
lapse of the Russian Empire, for the Realists 
represent the landed classes, while perhaps the 
greatest danger that faces Germany on the East is 
the^spread of Bolshevism. We must, in fact, with 
regard to their elections realize that there was 
German support for the Inter-party Club. Though 
the Inter-party Club support the National Demo- 
cratic programme, it was itself supported by Ger- 
man interest, which, equally with it, was opposed 
to the Socialist vote. 

At the same time, to us in England, and indeed 
to the cause of the Entente generally, the National 
Democrats are of peculiar interest, since they, like 
the spokesmen for the various governments of the 
Entente, aim at the unity and independence of 
Poland, which is among the avowed objects of us 
and our allies. 

But the National Democrats go further than the 
declarations of the governments of the Entente, 
and their programme now includes not only the 
union of Prussian Poland (as partitioned by the 
Congress of Vienna) of Austrian Poland and of 



76 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

the Russian kingdom of Poland, but they wish to 
see united into one anti-German state, additional 
territories of the ancient Repubhe, which included 
the North-west and South-west provinces of Rus- 
sia, territories which are not nowadays, nor indeed 
ever were inhabited by a Polish majority. In the 
Polish state, as the National Democrats would 
construct it, are included, '^the whole Lithuanian 
linguistic territory and the country south of it as 
far as the eastern extremity of Galicia, i.e. the 
present governments of Kovno, Vilna, Grodno, 
the larger part of Minsk and of Volhynia." This 
quotation, embodying the delimitation of the East- 
ern frontier, is taken from a privately printed 
document of which it may be affirmed that though, 
strictly speaking, it is not an official manifesto, it 
is an authoritative and correct expression of this 
party of Polish national feeling, and is accepted 
by the National Democrats as a true exposition of 
their aims. M. Dmowski is their acknowledged 
head, recognised as such not only by them, but 
also by the statesmen of the Entente, and, whether 
we agree with the whole programme or not, we 
have to give it our most careful attention, since 
of all Polish parties, the aims of this party ap- 
proximate more closely to the avowed objects of 
the statesmen of the Entente, for both have pro- 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 77 

claimed and are working for a united and inde- 
pendent Poland. Since M. Dmowski is the ac- 
knowledged spokesman of the National Democrats 
and their policy, and has allowed this formal man- 
ifesto of their aims formally accepted by his party 
to be circulated privately among those whose bus- 
iness it is to deal with Polish affairs, it is neces- 
sary to go into these aims in a detailed manner, 
and also to indicate the different shades of opinion 
through which M. Dmowski himself has passed. 

It says nothing against a serious and exceed- 
ingly shrewd politician as M. Dmowski undoubt- 
edly is, that his opinions have changed, and that 
in these changes he has carried a solid and unsplit 
party with him, but it is important to recognise 
that the aims of the National Democrats to-day are 
not what they were in August, 1914, and to state 
the causes which led to this change. That they 
have been not only misunderstood but miscon- 
strued is an additional reason for doing this. 
Since the outbreak of the war the National Demo- 
crats have taken no share whatever in party poli- 
tics, but have devoted themselves entirely to the 
realization of their national aims. We will state 
first the programme as it stands to-day, and the 
grounds on which it is based. 

The proposal is to restore to the new Polish 



\ 



78 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

State the great majority of the territories that 
once belonged to the Ancient Republic before its 
partitions. The claims on which this proposal are 
based are: (I) historical, (II) ethnographical, 
(III) religious. But though the historical basis 
is completely valid, for it is a mere matter of fact 
that all and more than the National Democrats 
claim did once belong to the Ancient Republic, the 
ethnographical and religious claims do not so uni- 
formly coincide with it or with each other. Very 
often both are commensurate with the historical 
basis, but sometimes, as we shall see, not both, but 
only one of them covers the historical field. The 
historical field again in certain instances, stretches 
itself out alone, and gets no support from ethno- 
graphical or religious considerations. 

Eastwards the National Democrats do not claim 
the whole of the original territories which once 
extended as far as the Dnieper in the South, and 
from there ran more or less due north, and in- 
cluded the government of Mohileff , Vitebsk and a 
large part of the Ukraine. Instead, as stated 
above, they would leave out governments like 
Mohileff (where Poles are in an infinitesimal mi- 
nority) but they include Lithuania, Minsk, and 
Volhynia. Along the north they make their 
frontier the Baltic from the mouth of the Niemen 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 79 

to the north-west extremity of the Bay of Dantzig. 
From there the frontier is drawn roughly south- 
wards, and includes in the new state the terri- 
tories of West Prussia, Posen and Upper Silesia. 
On the South the Carpathians form a natural 
frontier, and thus there is included in the new 
state the whole of Galicia. Poland would thus be 
reunited and, according to the authority already 
quoted as a reliable mouth-piece of their aims, ^*it 
may be taken for granted that on the territory of 
a Polish state, as roughly outlined above, the pop- 
ulation, Polish in language, culture, ideas and feel- 
ing would represent not less than seventy per cent, 
of the whole number of inhabitants. ' ' New Poland 
would on these lines ''have an area of about 
200,000 square miles — nearly equal to that of 
France or Germany, and a population — about 
38,000,000— nearly equal to that of France.'' 
It would have its seaboard on the Baltic with 
its ports of Dantzig and Koenigsburg, thus ex- 
ercising a perpetual veto on the Baltic becom- 
ing a mere German lake: its river-road of the 
whole course of the Vistula, its immense Silesian 
coal-fields, its petroleum-producing area in Gali- 
cia, its valuable metallic deposits in the district of 
Kielce; its industries in iron, cement, sugar, tex- 
tiles already flourishing before the war would re- 



80 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 



vive again, and to them would be added the indus- 
tries of Galicia and of Prussian Poland, which, as 
I think M. Dmowski clearly sees, is the key-stone 
of the new structure. It would raise a national 
army that would easily suffice to protect its na- 
tional interests and independence, its size and 
population would perhaps even give it rank 
among the Great Powers, for already the Poles 
themselves constitute numerically the sixth Euro- 
pean nation. Dawn would break on the night that 
has lasted for a hundred and fifty years of starless 
darkness. Such are the aims and the aspirations 
of the groups of Polish patriots, of whom the 
National Democrats are the chief. 

Now the advantages both for the Polish nation 
and for the powers of the Entente secured by the 
successful construction of such a state are so ob- 
vious that they need hardly be pointed out. The 
Polish interests in fact are identical with those 
of the Entente, and, as we shall presently see, 
they form but a part of the much larger pro- 
gramme for the checking of the Mittel-Europa ex- 
pansion in which both are vitally concerned. The 
strength and independence of Poland, her affilia- 
tion to Slav interests instead of her subordination 
to German interests are an essential factor in the 
aims of the Entente. An independent and power- 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 81 

ful Poland in fact is essential to secure the failure 
of tlie Mittel-Europa sclieme. But before passing 
on to those wider issues it is necessary to examine 
the constructive aims of the National Democrat 
party, and their acknowledged leader, M. Dmow- 
ski, somewhat more in detail. 

The National Democrat Party sprang from the 
National League which was organised about 1885, 
and its aims were to bring together the efforts 
of all Poles in all three parts of Poland for the 
reunion and independence of their country. In 
1895 M. Dmowski founded the Pan-Polonic Review, 
w^hich was devoted to the development of this 
policy, and published its official programme. In 
1907, the year which saw the creation of the An- 
glo-Eussian Entente, the National Democrats de- 
liberately adopted the orientation of the Powers 
of the Entente as opposed to that of the Central 
Empires, believing that before long the conflict 
must break out, and their motives and policy was 
fully set forth in ^^La question Polonaise/^ by 
M. Dmowski, which was published in Paris in 
1909. Here it is stated that Germany is the chief 
enemy to Polish aspirations, and that her aim is 
the destruction of Polish national ideals. A de- 
velopment of this policy was seen in the participa- 
tion of Poles in the so-called *'Neo-Slav^^ move- 



82 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

ment, the aim of which was to unite all Slav coun- 
tries in the coming struggle against Germany. 
After the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina 
in 1909, when Austria was preparing for war 
against Russia, there began (also among patriotic 
Poles) a propaganda against Russia, as being a 
chief enemy to Polish independence, and Gen- 
eral Pilsudski, whose patriotism and honesty 
have never been questioned even by those who 
most disagree with his policy, organised the 
Polish legions on behalf of Austria against Rus- 
sia. This had the unfortunate effect of split- 
ting up into opposed camps the most fervent 
Polish patriots, Pilsudski believing that Rus- 
sia was the chief est of Poland's enemies, while the 
National Democrats under the lead of M. Dmowski 
had decided to adopt the orientation of the En- 
tente powers as against Austria and Germany, 
and thus when the war broke out, we find one party 
of Polish patriots in the military service of Aus- 
tria against Russia, while the other, by the mouth 
of M. Jaronski, a Polish member of the Duma, 
declared in that assembly, on behalf of the Polish 
nation, that the Poles would support Russia 
against the Central Empires, and expected that 
the war would effect the realization of their dream 
of national unity and independence. Immediately 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 83 

following on that came the proclamation of Polish 
union by the Grand Duke Nicholas, which was ac- 
cepted by the National Democrats. As we have 
seen, this was taken by them to imply the union 
of Prussian and Austrian Poland with the Russian 
kingdom of Poland under the sceptre of the Tsar, 
but naturally it did not include Lithuania and the 
other Russian provinces which the National Demo- 
crat programme now claims. It was not until the 
Russian revolution of 1917, when the utter dis- 
organisation of Russia was evident that the Na- 
tional Democrats put out the extension of their 
aims and demanded these Russian provinces also. 
Up till then they supported Russia and the aims 
of the Entente. But on that, while continuing to 
support the Entente, they drafted their wider bill. 
M. Dmowski, as has been seen from this short 
analysis of the policy of the party which he has 
always led, and of which he is the acknowledged 
spokesman, is a politician of the flexible type, or 
rather his tactics have been flexible, so to speak, 
though his strategy has been inflexible. His aims, 
that is to say, have never varied, though he has 
always been willing to ally himself and his party 
with any power which he thought was likely to 
grant some fraction of his invariable aspirations 
which throughout have been the unity and inde- 



84 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

1 

pendence of his country. Thus at one time he was 
violently opposed to the land-owning Realists, with 
whom he is now firmly allied, on the grounds of 
their being too subservient to the Russian Gov- 
ernment. Opportunist he certainly has been, but 
it must be remembered that opportunism only be- 
comes an intellectual or moral dishonesty when 
the aim of a policy, not the tactics that are likely 
to secure it, varies. And M. Dmowski's aim has 
always burned with a flame that has never flick- 
ered. But it is curious to note that while his aims 
have been invariable, his policy has always been 
precisely the opposite of Pilsudski's. The latter, 
now languishing in German internment, has al- 
ways fought with Poland's chi'ef enemy, whoever 
that was, while M. Dmowski has always made 
friends with any who promised concessions. 

It was for this last move, namely, the demand 
for provinces belonging to a disintegrated coun- 
try which hitherto he had supported, that his ene- 
mies and opponents. Socialists, Jews and Cadets, 
chiefly deride his career and politics as those of 
a *^ Facing-all-ways.'' It has made him an easy 
target for caricature which, to the present writer, 
misrepresents him or does not understand him. 
For he accepted the manifesto of the Grand Duke 
as giving Poland the best chance of unity that was 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 85 

then likely to be offered. He staked then on the 
success of the Russian arms, and Russia would 
never give Poland the Russian provinces which 
he now includes in his Polish State. Then came 
the collapse of Russia, upon which, still staking 
on the success of Russia's allies he enlarged his 
aims. To make the unity of the Polish nation com- 
plete, he added the provinces which Russia while 
it existed, would not give, but which non-existent 
Russia could not withhold. Without attempting 
to justify his policy, or approve of its wisdom, we 
must realize that it was not inconsistent. The 
motive behind it all was to secure the largest pos- 
sible measure of unity and independence for Po- 
land, and the collapse of Russia had now made 
possible — given that the Entente, minus Russia, 
was victorious — a greater Poland than was pos- 
sible when the Grand Duke Nicholas made his 
proclamation, and the National Democrats ac- 
cepted it. 

His enemies misunderstood this, and on the ac- 
cusation of political knavery, they built a further 
accusation of political imbecility. For they point 
to the programme of the National Democrats as it 
now stands, and say, ^^How on earth can this be 
realized? That Russia should give to Poland the 
provinces that belong to her implies a Russian 



86 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

I — 

defeat, and a triumph of German arms. Unless 
forced to do so, Russia would never give up her 
own provinces. On the other hand, Germany and 
Austria will not give up Galicia and Prussian 
Poland unless they are defeated and Russia vic- 
torious. Therefore the Poland that M. Dmowski 
postulates implies a total defeat of both sides, 
which is impossible, and, therefore, M. Dmowski 
is a political imbecile.'' 

Now this is very shallow reasoning, and is based 
either on misunderstanding or misrepresentation. 
As pointed out, the difference in tactics between 
the acceptance of the Grand Duke's manifesto and 
the completer demands now made by the National 
Democrats corresponds to the difference between 
the Russian situation of 1914 and the Russian sit- 
uation of 1917. What was not possible in 1914 is, 
theoretically, possible now, and should the Cen- 
tral Empires be completely beaten, there is no 
practical reason why the National Democratic pro- 
gramme should not be realised. The Entente 
powers, that is to say, would, if completely victor- 
ious, be able to unite Lithuania and the other Rus- 
sian provinces with Poland, and thus accomplish 
what M. Dmowski 's opponents say was not pos- 
sible except on the supposition that both Germany 
and Russia were simultaneously to suffer a crush- 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 87 

ing defeat. Whetlier that is desirable or not is 
another question, but it is not an imbecile dream 
founded on the total defeat of two opposed bel- 
ligerents. It was not possible in 1914, but it must 
be remembered that the National Democrats did 
not put forth that demand then. They accepted 
the Grand Duke's proclamation, for doing which 
then, and for claiming a completer Poland now, 
M. Dmowski has already been labelled a ' ' Facing- 
all-ways. ' ' But if he is that, he is not an imbecile 
in demanding concessions that imply a total de- 
feat of both sides. His enemies may make their 
choice as to which label they attach to him, bu^ 
they really must not attach both. One of the iwo 
slips off. 

But there are points in this programme of the 
National Democrats which demand much more 
serious consideration and criticism. It will be 
remembered that the National Democrats aspire 
to a new Poland of 38,000,000 inhabitants of which 
not less than 70 per cent, are '^Polish in language, 
culture, ideas and feeling.'' Now 70 per cent, of 
38,000,000 is 26,600,000, a number which vastly ex- 
ceeds the total number of Poles in the whole area 
under discussion. Estimates as to this total dif- 
fer; Mr. Geoffrey Drage, for instance, in his *'Pre- 
War Statistics of Poland and Lithuania," gives 



88 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

the total number of Poles in these territories as 
18,626,000, a deficit of 6,000,000 below those in the 
privately-printed document. Similarly M. Ole- 
chowski, himself a Nationalist, who likewise makes 
out a strong case on behalf of united Poland, puts 
the total down as 19,400,000, and I have nowhere 
been able to find any authority or to construct any 
system of calculation which places the aggregate 
of the true Polish population as higher than be- 
tween 21,000,000 and 22,000,000. Or, to apply 
another test, let us take in detail the various con- 
stituent parts of the new Polish state, and see how 
the percentages in them correspond with the per- 
centage given above. They are as follows : — 

Percentage of Poles. 

Kingdom of Poland 74.0 

Lithuania 18.47 

Minsk 10.3 

Volhynia 9.97 

Galicia 58.55 

Teschen 54.9 

Posen 61.5 

West Prussia 35.5 

Government of Allenstein 50.0 

These are pre-war statistics, but they are the 
latest available, and it is at once clear from them 
that you cannot get out of them an average of 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 89 

anything approaching 70 per cent, of Poles. In 
addition to this, the total population of the areas 
under consideration is considerably more than 
38,000,000, and must be put down as being over 
40,000,000, which again dilutes the percentage of 
Poles. 

On the other hand, it will be noticed that the 
author of our document says that this 70 per cent. 
is ' ' Polish in language, culture, ideas and feeling, ^ ' 
and does not definitely say "Polish in blood.'' 
But the reader would rightly infer that this was 
meant, since his argument is ethnographical, and 
he himself confirms that impression, for he im- 
mediately goes on to speak of the various other 
nationalities which compose the remaining 30 per 
cent., leaving you to conclude that the 70 per cent, 
are Poles by blood. Ethnographically, then, his 
figures are wrong, and seriously wrong, while if 
he means exactly (though misleadingly) what he 
says, we must suppose that he includes among 
"those of Polish culture, etc., those of Polish re- 
ligion, e.g. the Lithuanians. Some colour is given 
to this explanation by the fact that he says that 
^ ^ the Polish state . . . ought to include those pro- 
vinces where Western (Polish) civilization is in- 
eradicable ... or where the majority of the 
inhabitants are Catholics. ' ' Unless he includes all 



90 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

i 

Roman Catholics as ^^ Polish in culture, etc.," he 
cannot justify this 70 per cent., while (apart from 
the fact that if he does so include them, he ought 
to have said so) he must be aware that a very 
large percentage of those Roman Catholics are 
bitterly and violently anti-Polish. He tells us, for 
instance, that a great majority of the Lithuanians 
would vote for union with Poland, on which sub- 
ject we shall speak presently, and on such unsup- 
ported assertions I think that he must base his 70 
per cent. By no other means can he possibly 
arrive at it, and if these are the means he adopts, 
it must be noticed that he drops the ethnographical 
argument altogether, and substitutes for it the 
argument that co-religionists are always amicably 
inclined to each other. How dangerous such an 
assumption is, we shall see when we come in de- 
tail to the question of the inclusion of Lithuania 
in the Polish state. 

Our author recognises that the Jews will be an 
anti-Polish and pro-German element, and true to 
his anti-Jewish views, which are perfectly sound, 
as derived from present conditions, admits that 
**so large a number (two and a half millions) of 
Jews on the territory of the Polish states pre- 
sents a very serious disadvantage.'' But here 
again, in his desire to present the stability of his 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 91 

— -^ 

future state, lie both magnifies its strength and 
underrates its weaknesses, of which the pro-Ger- 
man Jewish population is among the greatest. For 
instead of there being only two and a half million 
Jews to be reckoned with there must be well over 
four millions of them, the various censuses show- 
ing:— 

Jews. 

Russian Poland (1911) 1,716,000 

Galicia (1910) 900,000 

Lithuania (1897) 697,000 

Minsk and Volhynia (1897) .... 740,000 

Prussian Poland (1905) 68,483 



4,121.483 



* 



To the new state of Poland, of which the Poles, 
pur sang, do not probably exceed twenty-one mil- 
lions at the most, this Jewish element, consistently 
anti-Polish, of over four millions is a danger which 
the National Democrats do not seem adequately 
to appreciate. For not only are they formidable 
in numbers, they are formidable in position also, 
when we consider that 80 per cent, of the total 
trade in the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania 
before the war passed through their hands. 

* These figures, however, include the populations of all Lithuania, 
Minsk and Volhynia, which are slightly greater than those in the 
programme. 



92 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

Certain trades like the leather trade and the 
stocking trade were entirely theirs, and Jewish 
money-lenders infested the small provincial towns, 
bringing ruin on their general interests. They 
are largely town-dwellers, and in centres of indus- 
try they form a much larger fraction of the popu- 
lation than in country districts, where their in- 
fluence would be more scattered and less capable 
of being concentrated and organized ; in Warsaw, 
for instance, they make up 35 per cent, of the 
whole population. Moreover, since the occupation 
of the Kingdom of Poland by the Central Empires, 
the Germans have opened Jewish schools, removed 
the disabilities which previously attached to their 
race, and done all in their power to encourage 
them and strengthen their position, well knowing 
that by so doing they were tightening their own 
grip on Poland. All this our author minimizes, 
and hopefully remarks that there has been a 
^'strong tendency among them towards emigra- 
tion, which is likely in the future to develop on a 
larger scale.'' He commits the strategical error, 
in fact, of underrating the strength of his adver- 
saries, which the Jews most undoubtedly are. In 
Lithuania, it is true, the Germans originally 
treated the Jews very differently, squeezing and 
despoiling them during the earlier months of their 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 93 

occupation, for the reason that they then contem- 
plated having to give back Lithuania to Russia, 
and wanted to make as much out of it as possible, 
so that they would restore it in a completely im- 
poverished condition. But in the Kingdom of 
Poland they have encouraged Jews as being their 
allies and coadjutors, for they never meant to let 
Poland go back to Russian domination. From this 
point of view, it is no wonder that when late in 
1917 a Jewish deputation waited on the Minister 
of Justice and Social Affairs, asking for further 
privileges, the minister replied that the best rem- 
edy for Jewish grievances was the emigration 
from Poland of Jews. This was a short-sighted 
and foolish reply, for the Jewish problem in Po- 
land, if we are to see a strong and united Poland, 
is not to be solved by belittling their importance, 
or by hostility to them with a view to eliminating 
them. It cannot, indeed, be too strongly stated 
that a liberal policy with regard to Jews is abso- 
lutely essential to the coherence of the new Polish 
state. They are far too important and numerous 
to disregard, and hostility to them would merely 
result in making a strong pro-Grerman party in a 
state which, in order to exist, must purge itself of 
pro-German elements. This particular purging 
cannot be effected in any other way than by shew- 



94 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

ing the Jews that Polish prosperity is involved 
with their well-being. 

(iii) The Question of Lithuania 

We now come to a more detailed consideration 
of the qnestion of Lithuania, which the author of 
our document claims for inclusion in the new 
state. Historically the whole of Lithuania formed 
part of the ancient republic of Poland up to the 
time of the partitions, and roughly consisted of the 
following provinces, viz., Kovno, Vilna, Orodno, 
Minsk, Vitebsk and Mohilec. Out of these no 
claim, quite naturally, is put forward with regard 
to Vitebsk and Mohileff, where the percentage of 
Polish population is so small as to be completely 
negligible, for in Vitebsk Poles number only 50,000 
out of a total of close on one million and a half 
inhabitants, while in MohilefP the percentage of 
Poles is but a third of that in Vitebsk, for in Mo- 
hiletf there are but 18,000 Poles in a population of 
nearly 1,600,000. Thus out of '^Lithuania,'' as 
considered as a part of the ancient Republic, all 
are agreed to omit Vitebsk and Mohileff alto- 
gether, for the obvious reason that they are not 
Polish at all. Ethnographically the overwhelming 
majority of their inhabitants are White Russians, 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 95 

a race closely allied in blood and in language to 
Russia proper. 

There remain, therefore, on our author's claim 
to Lithuania for the new united Poland, the prov- 
inces of Kovno, Vilna, Grodno and Minsk. Of 
Minsk he claims the '' greater part," as also of 
another Russian province Volhynia. Since he 
separates the claim for Minsk and VolhjTiia from 
the claim for ^ ^ Lithuania, " we will follow his 
grouping, and understand by the term '^Lithu- 
ania" the three provinces of Kovno, Vilna and 
Grodno. 

His argument is that they once belonged to 
the Polish republic (which everybody allows), and 
so, on historical grounds, should be returned to 
it, and he supplements this by the consideration 
that the Lithuanians, at any rate, out of the in- 
habiting populations are co-religionists with the 
Poles. But the real reason on which his case rests, 
and for which (apart from the Mittel-Europa 
question) the Powers of the Entente have all de- 
clared themselves in favour of a united and inde- 
pendent Poland, is not a matter of history (other- 
wise England might claim Calais) or of creed 
(otherwise she might claim Protestant Germany), 
but of race. The cause that underlies the justice 
of a united Poland is the right of nations, small 



96 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

or great, to exist, and ethnographically this de- 
mand for the annexation of Lithuania, and the 
greater part of Minsk and Volhynia, utterly breaks 
down. 

With regard to Lithuania, our author allows 
that there would be included in the new Polish 
state two and a half millions of Lithuanians 
^* linked to the Poles by religion and civilisation, 
who would find in the Polish state the conditions 
most favourable to their national progress.'' 
Read in its context, which claims for the new state 
38,000,000 inhabitants of which 70 per cent, are 
** Polish in culture, etc., this sounds as if ethno- 
graphically the inclusion of Lithuania might be 
admissible. But when we come to look at Lithu- 
ania itself, it wears a very different aspect. For 
according to the most reliable information obtain- 
able the census figures for Lithuania are these* : — 

Total population 5,728,000, of which 18.47 per 
cent, are Poles; or in detail: — 

Vilna 26.31 

Kovno 11.4 I per cent, of Poles. 

Grodno 17.0 i 

* * * Pre-War statistics of Poland and Lithuania, ' ' G. Drage, p. 
8. This estimate, if we compare it with others, gives the highest 
percentage of Poles. 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 97 

The Russian return of 10 per cent. Poles in the 
province of Vilna is certainly below the mark, in 
fact it shews considerably less than half the trne 
population, which is 26.3 per cent. But it is not 
admissible on purely ethnogTaphical grounds to 
claim as national territory a district in which the 
nation in question only numbers a quarter of the 
inhabitants. As for the rest of Lithuania the 
percentage is lower yet, consisting as it does of 
11.4 per cent, in Kovno and 17.0 per cent, in 
Grodno. This minority, it is true, consists to a 
considerable extent of land-o^vning Poles, as op- 
posed to the mass of the Lithuanian peasantry, 
for Lithuania, is emphatically a country of ruraJ 
populations, and in the whole of its three prov- 
inces there are but seven towns containing more 
than 20,000 inhabitants,'' but if the ownership of 
land constitutes a claim for Poland over Lithu- 
ania, the same claim of the Germans over Silesia 
holds good, for a quarter of all Silesia belongs 
to six German proprietors. If then on the Demo- 
cratic principle Poland refuses to admit the Ger- 
man claim there, she must abandon a similar claim 

* These are Vilna (205,000), Bialystock (90,000), Grodno 

(60,000), Brest-Litovsk (60,000), Schaulen (22,000), Slonim 

(22,000). These figures are derived from a recent German 
source. 



98 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

of her own with regard to Lithuania, in so far 
as it is founded on ownership of soil. And mere 
ownership of soil is a singularly poor Demo- 
cratic argument. 

Now since in these three provinces the total 
population is over five and a half millions, of 
which two and a half only, according to our au- 
thor's figures, are Lithuanians, and of which Poles 
form only 18 per cent., what of the remaining 
millions! The answer is that by an immense 
majority they are White Russians, who, both by 
blood and by language, are closely connected, not 
with Poles at all, but with the inhabitants of 
Great Russia. Out of the three provinces, Kovno 
is overwhelmingly Lithuanian by blood, for the 
Lithuanians constitute a majority over Great Rus- 
sians, White Russians, and Poles all added to- 
gether. In Vilna the WTiite Russians constitute 
a similar majority, outnumbering Great Russians 
and Poles and Lithuanians, and also, though not 
so overwhelmingly, in Grodno. There in the west- 
ern part of the province the Poles have a local 
majority, and by a small rectification of the fron- 
tier it would be easy to include in the new Polish 
state a slice of territory, contiguous to the pres- 
ent Kingdom of Poland, where Poles will be in an 
indubitable majority, and a similar inclusion might 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 99 

reasonably be made with regard to parts of Yilna. 
On ethnographical grounds, which are the only 
ones that the Governments of the Entente recog- 
nise as valid, these rectifications are desirable. 
But this is a very different thing from claiming 
for the future State of Poland a vast area of 
provinces which by no tie of blood or language 
can possibly be considered as authentically Po- 
lish. Kovno is overwhelmingly Lithuanian, Vilna 
and Grodno are overwhelmingly White Eussian. 
In none of the three provinces of ^^ Lithuania" is 
there an approach to a majority of Poles. The 
percentage in Vilna is the highest, for there Poles 
form one quarter of the total population. But 
to make an ethnographical claim on such grounds 
is to reverse the usual sense of the word ^^ethno- 
graphical. ' ' 

However, the will of the people, self-determina- 
tion, may constitute, even if ethnographically the 
conclusion is unsound, a reason for the fusion 
of one nationality in another, and our author as- 
serts that a Lithuanian plebiscite would vote for 
inclusion in this new state. But even allowing that 
reports from Lithuania are coloured in Germany 
(which in itself does not seem probable, since Ger- 
many has before now^ considered the possibility of 
uniting the Kingdoms of Poland and Lithuania 



100 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

under German suzerainty, and so would not em- 
phasize the dissonance between Poles and Lithu- 
anians), such evidence as is accessible does not 
bear out this assertion. For the inhabitants of 
Lithuania have repeatedly protested against a 
fusion with Poland, regarding the Poles as their 
bitterest enemies. In 1916, for instance, the Lithu- 
anian Socialists demanded independence, and de- 
clared against union with Poland: the Union of 
White Russian peasants in the following year (at 
a Congress they held at Minsk) issued a proclama- 
tion demanding union with Russia; in 1917 the 
Lithuanian Army Congress in Petrograd de- 
manded that Lithuanians then included in Polish 
regiments should be allowed to transfer them- 
selves to Russian regiments. Such instances, it 
is submitted, are tangible evidence against a mere 
assertion, in support of which no evidence is pro- 
duced. 

It is, moreover, a dangerous thing to lay too 
much stress on the value of the bond of religion 
in such a consolidation as this unless that bond 
is cemented by the stronger ties of blood, for 
while religious differences have often constituted 
a cause of quarrel, we do not, as a matter of pracr 
tical experience, find that a unity in religion con- 
stitutes a very binding force, except when, per- 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 101 

haps, there is religious persecution which brings 
co-religionists together. Such has not been the 
case in Lithuania, and as a matter of fact Po- 
lish and Lithuanian co-religionists have before 
now arrived at a very acute pass in the matter 
of the language to be used in churches, Lithu- 
anians advocating a Lithuanian ritual, in those 
portions of the mass where Latin is not used, 
and Poles championing their own tongue. In fact, 
the religious bond has been the cause of con- 
siderable ditferences in opinion, and free fights 
have taken place in churches. Accounts of such 
disturbances have no doubt been exaggerated, but 
it is important to avoid exaggeration on the other 
side, and find in a common religion a valid cause 
for incorporating Lithuania in the new state. 
This religious bond, moreover, whatever it is 
worth, is only applicable as between racial Lithu- 
anians and Poles. But in the three provinces 
which constitute Lithuania the numerical majority 
of the inhabitants are White Russian, whose na- 
tional religion is not Roman Catholic but Greek 
orthodox. If then a conamon religion binds two 
of these nationalities, the same bond is equally 
valid between Russians and White Russians. 

Similarly in the Russian province of Minsk (the 
greater part of which is claimed by the National 



102 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

Democrats for the new state) and of Volhynia, 
we can find no ethnographical reason for this fu- 
sion since the Polish population of Minsk consti- 
tutes at the very outside but 10.3 per cent, of the 
total population, while in Volhynia it is slightly 
less, or 9.97 per cent. And in the absence of 
ethnographical support, have these districts shown 
any self-determination towards union with Po- 
land? I think our author would have mentioned it 
if they had. Finally, in Eastern Galicia he only 
claims a minority of 25 per cent, for the Poles, 
and this seems, if we compare it with other esti- 
mates, to be rather a rosy view of the extent of 
the consanguinity. 

There is then no sound ethnographical reason 
why these former Russian provinces should be 
joined to the new state, but there are very sound 
reasons why they should not. To begin with, the 
whole case for the unity of Poland rests on ethno- 
graphical grounds, and to incorporate provinces 
in none of which Poles form anything like a ma- 
jority is to stultify those grounds. To incorporate 
these Russian provinces not by their act of self- 
determination, but as far as we can see, in direct 
opposition to their will, would be to introduce a 
constant element of friction in the new state. 
There are, God knows, enough Polish parties as 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 103 

it is, and the inclusion of these malcontent popula- 
tions would have the result not of strengthening 
the new state by adding to its numbers, but of 
weakening it by introducing discordant and rebel- 
lious elements. The fallow-field has to be sown 
with corn, and if the Entente permitted this, they 
would themselves be sowing tares there. 

But German politicians were more far-sighted — 
they the enemy sowing tares — than Polish pa- 
triots, who on the complete explosion of Eussia 
ran to the spot and picked up fragments of the 
disjected structure. Germany from time to time 
has seriously considered a scheme for the union 
of parts of Lithuania with Poland, and ideas have 
been mooted for the colonization of Lithuania 
and Courland, in the further distant future, by 
Poles. Either of these schemes was worthy of 
her policy of dividing and so governing, and it was 
partly the more short-sighted sabre-rattling in- 
sistence of the Hindenburg Junkers and the oppo- 
sition of Austria, who wanted a juncture between 
Poland and Galicia under a Habsburg prince, that 
prevented these policies from being carried into 
effect; partly, she anticipated serious trouble in 
Lithuania itself, if she attempted to carry out 
such an unnatural union. She would have liked 
to do it, for such policies were policies of dis- 



104 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

integration, which are the sharpest arrows in the 
whole of German diplomacy, and the astonishing 
thing is that Polish patriots, who genuinely, but 
less long-sightedly, desire the union of Polish na- 
tionalities, should have advocated the same pro- 
gramme as Germany, with the opposite end in 
view, also desired. Germany, a thousand times 
was right in wishing to join Lithuania to Po- 
land as a means of defeating the aims of the Na- 
tional Democrats. M. Dmowski and the National 
Democrats, I venture to think, are wrong in pro- 
posing this unnatural union as a source of strength 
to the future Polish State. 

There is another reason, stronger than any 
yet, against this unhomogeneous welding together 
of states that by blood are in the main alien, 
that by religious conviction make a cause of griev- 
ance rather than a tie out of a common creed, 
and have only the historical bond, the fragrance 
of which is that of dried flowers, to bind together 
utterly dissimilar elements. Supposing the vic- 
torious Entente can construct the State of Poland 
as it chooses, what will be the result, either from 
the Nationalist Polish standpoint or from that of 
the foes of the Mittel-Europa policy, of this forced 
union? Some time and somehow, when once there 
is a bar erected against the Mittel-Europa expan- 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 105 

sion, there must, if that bar is to be effective, arise 
a Slav state, or several Slav states, eastwards of 
Poland. Russia, in some form or other, will arise 
from its ruins, possibly united again, but probably 
separated into a Muscovite state and a Little Rus- 
sian state, and to make the bar against Mittel- 
Europa capable of resistance to German interests 
the State of Poland must infallibly orientate east- 
wards, and not look to the German frontier for 
its friends. But should Lithuania and the other 
provinces be forcibly torn away from Russia, they 
will form a new and acuter Alsace and Lorraine in 
the Slav power which it is our design to erect 
against the expansion of Germany eastwards. 
Muscovy and South Russia, or, if they are con- 
joined, both of them, will indubitably want to re- 
cover the lost provinces, while the State of Po- 
land will want to retain them. And the ally ready 
to help either of them will be Germany. New 
Russia will appeal to Germany to recover her 
provinces, or New Poland will appeal to Ger- 
many in order to retain them. One or other will 
make such an appeal, and it will not fall on deaf 
ears. Russian and German arms, as in the case 
of the original partitions, will fall on Poland, 
or Germany in alliance with Poland (thus mend- 
ing up the broken chain of Mittel-Europa again), 



106 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

will march against Russia. In either case, Ger- 
many will advance a step further on her east- 
ward march. Should Russia and Germany come 
to an understanding, the new state will be crushed 
and repartitioning will begin again, should Ger- 
many and Poland come to an understanding, Ger- 
many will have affiliated herself to Poland afresh, 
and have a valuable ally against Russia. 

This is not a fantastic conclusion, for Germany, 
never fantastic, has already foreseen it. As long 
as a year ago (February, 1917) Herr Gothein, one 
of the most acute of German political writers, 
advocated that Russian territories mainly in- 
habited by non-Poles should be united to Poland, 
because Poland would then be in a ^^ natural per- 
manent antagonism to Russia.'^ Germany would 
create, in fact, an Alsace-Lorraine problem, such 
as existed between her and France. But in this 
case she would, again on the principle of ^Divide 
et impera/ create it between her antagonists, an 
undeniably attractive scheme. One or other of 
them she would be bound to draw into her net, and 
Mittel-Europa, checked for the time by defeat in 
the present war, would resume its progress. 
Either the independent Polish state, created with 
such care by the Powers of the Entente, would be 
organized and armed and employed by her, or she 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 107 

would make friends with Russia, and crush the 
new Polish state out of existence. In either case 
she would ^^ score.'' 

So, for both reasons, namely the homogeneity 
of the new Polish state, since the inclusion of 
Lithuania and Minsk and Volhynia would un- 
doubtedly lead to internal disruption, and for 
the quashing of the Mittel-Europa policy it is of 
primary importance that the new state should not 
contain discordant elements, or elements that be- 
long not to her, but to the Power with which she 
must be affiliated, namely the Slav element east- 
wards, and not the Teutonic element westwards. 
One or other of the new states, either some form 
of Russia or the more distinct form of an inde- 
pendent and united Poland, must otherwise, if the 
new state attempts to incorporate provinces that 
are Russian by the ethnography which is the basis 
of the new state, be driven into the embraces of 
Germany, who, as already noticed, will be ready 
to receive it with open arms. 

Such, outlined as briefly as possible, seems the 
only really debatable point about the programme 
of the National Democrats with which, otherwise, 
the policy of the Entente is in complete accord. 
If united Poland, according to the programme of 
M. Dmowski and the National Democrats, ever 



108 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

succeeds in including Lithuania, Minsk and Vol- 
hynia, she will have sowed the seeds of her own 
destruction. And if the powers of the Entente, 
successful, as is postulated from the first, over 
the Central Empires, consent to such an arrange- 
ment, they will have sowed tares among their 
corn. 

The harvest that will eventually be reaped will 
have been of their own deliberate sowing. They 
will have sown the seeds of dissonance between 
their own allies, and when that harvest is ripe it 
will be Germany who will put in the sickle. A new 
Russia is essential to their aims as well as a new 
Poland, and it is vital that the two shall not start 
life growling over a contentious bone. The new 
state of Poland, with the perpetual menace or the 
insidious Mother- Wolf smile of Germany on one 
side of her, must be buttressed by the Slav inter- 
ests contiguous to her on the East, and to sow 
cause of dissension between a resurrected Russia 
and the recreated state would be an act, in the 
opinion of the present writer, of political imbecil- 
ity that positively calls for trouble, and he finds it 
hard to see how there can be any divergence of 
opinion among those who recognise the actual and 
potential menace of Germany's Drang nach osten. 
To attempt to enlarge Poland by the introduction 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 109 

of discordant elements, unsupported by ethno- 
graphical validity, at the expense of the conn- 
try with whom she must be allied is to create a 
quarrel between those on whose union of interest 
the whole anti-Mittel-Europa policy depends. 

Finally, on grounds of even wider and more 
essential expedience, this inclusion of Lithuania 
and the other Eussian provinces in the new state 
of Poland is undesirable, since it would be an 
anti-democratic step, based not on the will of 
the people, but, precisely, on the Imperialistic 
spirit which our armies and our navies are fight- 
ing. The mere desire of possession is all the rea- 
son that can be produced for the National Demo- 
crat claims to Minsk and Volhynia, while o^mer- 
ship of land, which is at the base of the plea for 
Lithunia, is scarcely less Imperialistic than the 
other. If the new state is to prosper it must be 
built on such democratic foundation as that on 
which Russia will sometime arise again, and not 
on the principles by which Germany annexes and 
governs. She, the friend of tyrants, knows de- 
mocracy to be her bitterest and most dangerous 
foe, and to found a Poland which is not hallowed 
by democracy would be to create a friend to Ger- 
many in the people whom we desire to establish 
in impregnable resistance to her. And the pil- 



110 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

lars which support that state must be the un- 
divided and invincible will of all those who com- 
pose it. 

What, then, must be the fate of Lithuania if 
the Polish solution is inadmissible! Either she 
must form an autonomous state, or revert to some, 
as yet non-existent, Russian combination. So 
long as Russia is in its present condition of cha- 
otic anarchy, it is quite impossible to foretell 
what that combination will be, but it is unthink- 
able that such chaos is anything but temporary. 
Given the defeat of the Central Empires and an 
end to their unhindered policy of disintegration 
there, order will eventually be restored and a 
firm political establishment emerge, to which 
Lithuania, considerable sections of which are in 
favour of the Russian solution for their country, 
will be attached. Other sections of opinion there 
vote for independence, but the political objection 
to that is the smallness of a possible Lithuanian 
state, while its complete isolation implies a ter- 
ritory strategically indefensible among more pow- 
erful neighbours. 

I have presented the case against the proposed 
absorption of Lithuania in the new Polish state 
at some length, because the principle involved, 
namely, that of securing harmonious relations be- 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 111 

tween the states which will form the barrier to 
the unlimited expansion of Mittel-Europa east- 
wards, appears to me of supreme and vital im- 
portance. It is only fair, therefore, to state with 
equal clearness the views of the leading National 
Democrats on the question who are in favour of 
the inclusion of Lithuania in the new Poland. 

They argue that this cession of Lithuania to 
Poland is not in the least likely to cause friction 
between the Polish and Eussian states since, ac- 
cording to their views, Russian politicians recog- 
nise that the country was wrongfully wrested from 
Poland by the partitions, and that though its in- 
habitants are not in the main of Polish blood they 
are just as little of Russian blood, but form a 
nationality of their own, too small to be consti- 
tuted into a wholly independent state, and there- 
fore to be attached with some considerable de- 
gree of self-government to a neighbouring state. 
That state should in equity be Poland, of which 
for four hundred years Lithuania formed a part, 
whereas only the political crime of the partition 
has joined it wrongfully to Russia for a quarter 
of that period. The National Democrats place 
second to none of their aims the rehabilitation 
of Russia, but as Russia is now, and must continue 
for many years yet, in a state of disorganiza- 



112 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

tion, it is vital to the anti-Mittel-Europa policy 
of the Entente that Lithuania should not remain 
in loose confederation with a Power whose whole 
energies and resources will be taxed to the utter- 
most for years to come in establishing order and 
government among the peoples who directly be- 
long to it. Furthermore, the most sanguine of 
optimists cannot expect that Russia can recover 
her strength and solidity before the lapse of many 
decades, and it is necessary that while Russia is 
weak, so, proportionately, should new Poland be 
made as strong as possible in order to render firm 
the barrier to Germany ^s expansion eastwards. 

Just as Russia will not, according to the view 
of the National Democrats, object to the loss of 
Lithuania, so Lithuania will not object to Po- 
land's gain. Educated opinion there sees as 
clearly as the National Democrats themselves that 
she cannot stand alone, for that would speedily 
mean that she would be penetrated by Germany, 
and her most natural affiliation is to Poland. By 
blood she is a non-Russian country, and though 
by blood she is not predominantly Polish either, 
yet the Poles form a not negligible percentage of 
her population, while her civilization is purely 
Polish. The two countries have a common re- 
ligion, and economically she is far more closely 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 118 

bound to Poland than to Russia, and for years 
her trade has gravitated to Warsaw and not to 
Petrograd or Moscow. Linguistically also, though 
the native language has as little to do with Polish 
as it has with Russian, no educated Lithuanian 
is ignorant of Polish, and it is impossible for 
an educated man to live there with interchange 
of ideas and civilized thought without speaking 
Polish. Russian is merely the official language 
imposed by the dominating state, and the neces- 
sity of the employment of the Polish tongue was 
seen when, during the advance of the German 
army, the troops passed out of Poland into Lithu- 
ania. For the Germans arriving there dismissed 
their Polish interpreters under the impression 
that Russian alone would now be needed. But 
they could make no headway whatever in that 
language, and had to send for their Polish inter- 
preters again. 

It is with these arguments, many of which have 
undoubtedly considerable weight, that the Polish 
leaders of the National Democrats support their 
claim for Lithuania. The matter does not admit 
of compromise, for Lithuania must be united 
either to Poland or to Russia. Ethnographically 
she strictly belongs to neither, but with all due 
respect to the right of separate nationalities to 



r 



114 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

enjoy a national and independent existence, it is 
clearly possible to push that principle too far. 
Basques and Bretons are not ethnographically 
French, nor are the Welsh English, but just as 
no sane thinker would dream of demanding for 
any of those a separate independent existence, so 
no one who has studied the problems of Eastern 
Europe could wish to create an independent Lithu- 
ania. She must be joined to Russia or to Poland, 
and the reader who reflects on the arguments ad- 
vanced on the one side and the other must make 
up his mind in which direction wisdom points. 

Note. — Mr. Harold Williams has very himdly 
read over and discussed with me the foregoing 
arguments advanced hy the National Democrats 
for the inclusion of Lithuania^ and has sent me 
the statement of his views on the question, which 
I append: — 

* ^ Note on the Claim of the Polish National 
** Democrats to Lithuania. 

**The National Democrats are powerfully 
influenced by the Polish historical tradition. 
That is their strength, but it also creates cer- 
tain difficulties in the search for an equable 
solution of the problems of Eastern Europe. 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 115 

Without going into the larger question of the 
extent of territory that may ultimately be 
included in the reconstituted Polish state, it 
may be sufficient to point out in reference to 
Lithuania : — 

^^(1) That it includes a very considerable 
Wliite Eussian population which is certainly 
more Russian than Polish. The official lan- 
guage of the Lithuanian state which under 
Jagello was united with Poland was White 
Eussian, and the ground of the claims of the 
Grand Dukes and Tsars of Moscow and Eus- 
sia on Lithuanian territory was the fact that 
Lithuanian territory was largely ^Eussian,' 
and included principalities which in the Kiev 
period formed a part of the loosely federated 
Eussian state. This purely historical argu- 
ment has little force now, but the ethnograph- 
ical argument retains its weight. 

^^(2) The Lithuanian National movement, 
which has developed in recent years, is pre- 
dominantly anti-Polish, and is not anti-Eus- 
sian, though it strongly opposed the oppres- 
sive measures of the Eussian Government. 
Eussian was not merely an official language. 



116 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

It was, next to Lithuanian, the principal lan- 
guage of civilised intercourse used by the 
Lithuanian educated class. It is true that 
numbers of educated Lithuanians also spoke 
Polish, but in their modes of thinking and 
methods of action the influence of their train- 
ing in Eussian schools and universities is very 
noticeable. 

*^(3) The assertion that the inclusion of 
Lithuania in Poland would not cause friction 
between Poland and a reconstituted Eussia is 
hardly tenable, and would certainly not be 
upheld by responsible Eussian politicians of 
any party. The restoration of an independ- 
ent Poland within her ethnographical fron- 
tiers is an axiom of Eussian statesmanship, 
but to my knowledge it is equally certain 
that Eussian political leaders do not admit 
any Polish claim to sovereignty over Lithu- 
ania. If the physical possibility of deliberate 
and unfettered choice can be established, it is 
of course for the peoples of Lithuania them- 
selves to decide with which neighbouring po- 
litical unit they prefer to be more intimately 
connected. But from the standpoint of po- 
litical stability in Eastern Europe, which is 



POLAND AND THE ENTENTE 117 

the consideration of greatest importance to 
the Allies, it would be more desirable to see 
Lithuania federated in some way with Rus- 
sia, while giving certain economic privileges 
to Poland. The ideal solution would be one 
that would make Lithuania a link, and not a 
bone of contention between Russia and Po- 
land. 

Haeold Williams.'' 



CHAPTER IV 

Poland's Place in New Europe 

At the present moment the policy of the National 
Democrats with regard to a united and indepen- 
dent Poland is concurred in by the Realists (land- 
owners), the Progressives, the Christian Demo- 
crats, the party of Economic Independence and 
the National Union. Their united aims, including 
access to the sea for the new independent State, 
have been now centralized in the Polish National 
Committee, which has been formally recognised by 
the Entente Powers. M. Dmowski is its Presi- 
dent in Paris, Count L. Sobanski represents it 
in England, M. Skirmunt in Italy, and M. Pad- 
erewski in America. But since many, if not all of 
the Polish Parties in the Kingdom of Poland (with 
the exception, a weighty one, of the Jews) would 
support its policy, if they thought that there was 
a chance of its being realized, it is very important 
that it should clearly be brought to their knowl- 
edge that the powers of the Entente are solid for 
the establishment of the new State, that, in fact, 

118 



POLAND'S PLACE IN NEW EUROPA 119 

it forms an essential part of their scheme for an- 
nihilating the Mittel-Europa policy of Germany. 
It is true that there have been many single pro- 
nouncements on behalf of one or other of the 
Entente governments to this effect, but I would 
venture to suggest that a joint declaration * would 
be useful in order to restore in Poland a fuller 
confidence in the sincerity and unanimity of the 
Ententes aims in this regard. During the events 
of the last year, owing to Germany's success in 
her detachment of Eussia and her crushing of 
Rumania, this confidence has undoubtedly been 
shaken, and an impression, zealously fostered by 
German propaganda, has been produced that the 
Entente, in the absence of a solid declaration on 
the subject, may be treating the question of Po- 
land as a counter for bartering with. There has, 
too, been an ambiguity in the latest utterances 
of the Entente which has aroused suspicion, which 
it is most important to allay. Mr. Lloyd George, 
for instance, in January of this year, said ^^We 
believe that an independent Poland composed of 
all the genuine Polish elements desiring to form 

* This has now been done, for at a meeting at Versailles on 
June 3, 1918, the Prime Ministers of Great Britain, France, and 
Italy, declared that a united and independent Poland, with access 
to the sea, was one of the conditions of a solid and just peace. 



ISO THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

t ^ 

part of it is an urgent necessity for the stability 
of Eastern Europe,'' and Mr. Wilson echoed the 
ambiguous '' genuine Polish elements'' by the 
phrase ^ ' incontestably Polish." 

This expression has been pounced on by Ger- 
many, and interpreted to the Poles as signifying 
the exclusion of any territory where the popula- 
tion is not completely Polish, and the insinuation 
has been made that since no territory is exclusive- 
ly inhabited by Poles, the Entente mean to do 
nothing for them, except keep them as a make- 
weight to balance other concessions which Ger- 
many might have to make. It would restore Po- 
lish confidence in the sincerity of the promises 
made by the statesmen of the Entente, if it were 
possible for them to define their purposes a lit- 
tle more clearly, and **make known the inter- 
pretation thereof." 

Best of all would it be to demonstrate to the 
Poles that the existence not of a small Poland but 
a large one, not of a weak state but a strong one 
is as essential to the aims of the Entente as it 
is dear to the heart of all Polish patriots; that 
Poland's interests are identical with their own, 
not merely for the reason that nations small and 
large have the right of a national existence, but 
because of the stark necessity of preventing Ger- 



POLAND'S PLACE IN NEW EUROPA 121 

^^^^^^■^■^— ^~^™^^'^^"^^™^^^'^— ■^^^^^^^^^^■■— —^^ ■— ■■■^— *— — ^ 

man expansion at will eastwards. The motive of 
self-interest is always the clearest and most com- 
prehensible to other people, and it is the self- 
interest of the nations of the Entente that Po- 
land should be a nation too. The whole scheme 
is not difficult of explanation, and it is necessary 
to attempt it. 

It may be taken for granted that when Germany 
has asked for peace and has obtained it, not on 
her own terms but on those of the Entente, the 
Dual Monarchy Avill automatically fall to bits. 
It is at present governed by two minorities, the 
Magyar and the German, which jointly exercise 
authority over a non-cohering congeries of na- 
tions alien to them in blood. Of such are the 
Czechs, the Croatians, the Poles, the Slovaks, 
etc., who are held together by the cement of Ger- 
man predominance. Touching but briefly on this, 
and as it were, for the instruction merely of Poles 
who do not understand how essential is the erec- 
tion of the strong Polish state to the success of 
the policy of the Entente, we may note that, as 
has been incontrovertibly pointed out, another 
necessary link in the chain of Slav countries which 
will bar Germany's progress eastward will be 
a new Bohemia, comprising the present Kingdom, 
Moravia, part of Austrian Silesia and perhaps 



122 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

the northern or Slovak portion of Hungary. This 
kingdom would consist of a large Czech majority, 
and would number altogether some eleven mil- 
lion inhabitants. This Czech obstacle in the mid- 
dle of Germany's highway to the East, is of the 
very first importance. A long frontier of this 
state would thus run between the New Poland 
and the New Bohemia, and the two would have 
between them the strong cement of a common Ger- 
man antagonism. 

The restoration of a reinforced Rumania simi- 
larly, though not bearing directly on Poland, forms 
part of the scheme of the Entente; so too does 
the construction of the much-discussed Yugo-Slav 
state. Into all the intricacies of this, admirably 
set forth in the anonymous pamphlet quoted in the 
last chapter, it is not necessary to go, and indeed 
the mere analysis of the question is a matter for 
a separate treatise. To state the terms of it as 
briefly as possible, this Yugo-Slav state will con- 
sist of a population of Serbian speech, and include 
Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 
Croatia and Slavonia, and part at any rate of the 
Adriatic provinces of Dalmatia and Istria. This 
latter is of the first importance with regard to 
the effective combination of the Entente as touch- 
ing Germany's expansion eastwards, for it brings 



POLAND'S PLACE IN NEW EUROPA 123 

a new, powerful, Slav and anti-German state into 
touch with Italy and completes the cordon of the 
Western Allies. 

It will be seen from this mere enumeration 
what the general policy of the Entente is with 
regard to these Slav countries. The Entente want 
to make the largest possible political units of 
them. To attempt to bar Germany's progress by 
the creation or by the retention of a series of 
small states, would but give the signal for Ger- 
many to begin her nibbling again. Solid masses, 
not sundered units, must be put in her path, not 
a handful of pebbles which she can remove one 
by one, but ponderous rocks against which she 
will break in vain. 

It is for this reason that the Yugo-Slav com- 
bination has been propounded, and for precisely 
the same reason the policy of the Entente de- 
mands a Poland that shall be powerful and united, 
not leaning for support on Germany, nor easily 
to be penetrated by her, but joined for all future 
years in ' sympathy and interests with the Slav 
nationalities that will be at her back for her sup- 
port and buttressing, as she faces the power that 
tried to enslave her and failed. A small Poland, 
not uniting the vast majority of its nation, has 
no part in Polish aims, and it has none in the 



IM THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

aims of the powers that will her unity. To he of 
practical use to them they must enable her to 
realize her own aspirations. To-day the powers 
of the Entente are facing a front of Germans 
and German vassals that stretches from Ypres, 
solid and unbroken through Austria, Bulgaria and 
Turkey, as far as Hit on the Euphrates. Behind 
it, at the disposal of the Central Empires lie the 
once-free countries they have enslaved or con- 
quered, and, as in a barred room, their diabolical 
surgery goes on in the bodies of the bound, help- 
less but alive nations. But presently it shall 
be otherwise, and instead, a ring of living and 
vigorous peoples shall confine the power that once 
thought to enslave the world. From the shores 
of the Baltic, right across Europe to the shores 
of the Black Sea and the Adriatic, and from those 
shores westwards through Italy and Prance and 
northwards to England (the fort set on the seas 
that are free), and so across to the Baltic again 
shall the circle be formed, of which every part is 
essential and irreplaceable. And like some inex- 
haustible regiment in reserve America watches 
from the west. 

But it is not only by land to check the soaking 
of the corrosive German acid eastwards, ^^ peace- 
fully^' distilled by Jews and Turks, or to stay 



POLAND'S PLACE IN NEW EUROPA 125 

the inarch of German legions that a free and 
united Poland shall stand insolnbly linked to anti- 
Teutonic forces, but by sea also that she shall hold 
in her hand the containing cord. As we have 
already noticed, the Central Empires have let 
slip what they really mean by the freedom of the 
seas, and by their gracious permission they con- 
cede to the rest of Europe undisputed passage 
over the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans : but they have 
explicitly told us that the freedom of the high 
seas does not extend to the narrow seas. The 
Black Sea therefore and the Adriatic and the 
Baltic must remain as they are to-day, German 
lakes, where perhaps ships of other nations may 
cruise for their own pleasure or for Germany's 
profit, so long as Germany has not more serious 
business on hand. Then up shall go the signal 
^^ Closing Time," and they shall be barred to us 
until Germany, behind fortified entrances and 
mined waters shall have made her naval prepara- 
tions. There is no exaggeration about this : this 
is precisely what Germany means, and what she 
has said. 

Thus not on land alone Poland shall be sig- 
nificant for the freedom of Europe; she will be, 
with the coast of the Baltic in her hands, signifi- 
cant as regards the freedom of the narrow seas 



126 THE AVHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

I — 



over which Germany claims the sole control. For 
not only will the loss of this coast be an open 
door into the sea which otherwise Germany, in 
her present domination of the Baltic, might close 
at will, but in a far larger measure than this Po- 
land will be an essential link in the chain that 
by sea no less than by land will effectually bar 
the limitless expansion of Germany's scheme of 
slavery for the world. For here will be the north- 
ern termination of the line of unbroken anti-Ger- 
man states that will extend in a south-easterly 
direction across Europe to the ports of the sec- 
ond of the narrow seas tha^ to-day is German, 
and from Dantzig to Costanza the line of federa- 
tion will be complete. There on the Black Sea to- 
day every port is in German control. Through 
Turkey's subordination to her she has her finger 
on Trebizond and Batoum, and the key to the 
whole of that littoral, Constantinople; by her 
peace with the Ukraine she is port-master of the 
South Russian harbours. By her conquest of 
Rumania, Costanza is controlled from Berlin. 

But in order to ensure the freedom of the seas 
(by which we do not mean a freedom in the sense 
so clearly laid down by Count Czernin, according 
to which the control of the three European seas 
that are of supreme importance to Germany is 



POLAND'S PLACE IN NEW EUROPA 127 

excepted), it is vital to the interests of the En- 
tente that the Bosphorns and the Dardanelles 
should remain no longer in Turkish hands. Earlier 
in the war the expulsion of the Turkish govern- 
ment from Constantinople was laid down as among 
the aims of the Entente in the prosecution of their 
purpose, but a few months ago that provision 
was cut out (perhaps with a view to inducing 
Turkey to desert the Central Empires), and she 
was told that she might keep Constantinople. 
This formed the subject of satirical comment on 
the part of a certain Turco-phil portion of the 
English press, and we were reminded that it was 
but reasonable to tell Turkey that she might re- 
tain that which we had been unable to take away 
from her. But whatever was the object of that 
concession it failed to detach Turkey, and it is 
most sincerely to be hoped that since Turkey re- 
jected what she certainly understood to be an 
offer of terms to her, that oifer and that conces- 
sion will now be considered to be withdrawn. 
They were made, they were rejected, and — there 
is an end of them. For with Constantinople still 
in Turkish hands there can be but an insecure 
freedom of the Black Sea. It is impossible, how- 
ever firmly, in a territorial sense, we may sepa- 
rate Germany from her present vassal, to prevent 



1^8 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

1 

her reconstructing her hold over the Ottoman 
Empire. And with Constintinople and (in conse- 
quence) the Straits in Turkish hands, it will be 
worth Germany's while to intrigue and permeate 
again, so that, at her bidding, Turkey can close 
the Straits, as she has often done before, when 
convenient to Germany. Our policy here, in fact, 
ought not only to aim at securing a reliable free- 
dom of the Black Sea, but by the removal of the 
Turkish power from straits and capital alike, to 
make Turkey useless to Germany. Unless the 
Entente abate more of their demands, Turkey will 
at the conclusion of the war lose Armenia, Meso- 
potamia, Syria and Arabia, but so long as she 
holds the straits in her hand she may be of use 
to Germany. And when a thing is of use to Ger- 
many she generally picks it up, and puts it in 
her pocket. She has already done that to Turkey, 
and though at the end of the war we must take 
Turkey out of her pocket again, she will assuredly 
put her back there some day when we are not 
looking (which occurs most days) if Turkey still 
holds the Straits. 

It is, then, quite essential to the completion of 
the chain of seas which form part of the barrier 
that will prevent the armies of the Central Em- 
pires from progressing eastwards in accordance 



POLAND'S PLACE IN NEW EUROPA 1^9 

with any new scheme of conquest which they may 
frame, that the Black Sea shall not have doors 
that turn it, when closed, into a German lake : and 
equally essential is it that the Adriatic shall not 
have ports and harbours and defensive islands 
linked by interior lines of communication with 
the Central Empires. Treitschke once declared 
that Trieste was more important to Germany than 
Hamburg, and earlier yet Bismarck pronounced — 
and none of his utterances goes further to prove 
the genius of his statesmanship — that Trieste was 
the point of the German sword. That is pro- 
foundly true to-day, and since that sword-point 
is sharper now than ever, and flashes, poised with 
graver menace, it is the business of the En- 
tente to break that point off and weld it shining 
and strong on to the sword of Italy. Europe 
is not to see the Adriatic with its long Italian 
coast-line on the one side, and the Dalmatian ports 
and islands on the other, turned into a German 
lake, according to Count Czernin's programme. 
Too long already has the Adriatic constituted the 
cleavage between the East and West of Europe, 
with the powers of the Central Empires bridging 
it at the top, thus enabling them to menace and 
strike now East, now West. In the new Europe 
Italy shall join hands with the Yugo-Slav State 



130 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

on the East of that sea, with coast-line for both, 
and the Adriatic shall be under the guardianship 
of those to whom its shores belong. 

It is not by bombing the holy places and palaces 
of Venice that Austria will cow the eternal youth 
of Italy into a senile submission, and though in 
sheer wantonness at the bidding of German Kul- 
tur she wrecks and makes irreplaceable the love- 
liest things that the hand of man has builded in 
answer to the instinct of the heart that loves 
beauty, she destroys not them only, but,, irre- 
placeably also, her claim to be a civilised power, 
being naught else than the vassal of her mistress 
whom the world will never forgive. Like the St. 
George of Donatello, Italy stands there to guard 
her land, and her feet are beautiful upon the 
mountains and swift upon the plains where the 
Huns are gathered to destroy the loveliness of all 
the ages. By her are Jeanne d^Arc and St. George 
of England, and when the menace of Attila has 
been hurled back, Italy will reach out her hand 
across the narrow sea that Germany designed to 
be one of her harbours. And what Italy is in 
the south of Europe, and as regards the Adriatic, 
that precisely is Poland in the north and as re- 
gards the Baltic. Each links together the East 
to the two quarters of the West, completing the 



POLAND'S PLACE IN NEW EUROPA 131 

circle of free states that shall form the barrier 
against enslaving Powers. Each section of that 
encircling barrier is equally essential, for no se- 
curity can come to the world till it is welded and 
complete. 

It was in January of this year that a Polish 
member of the Chamber of Deputies in Vienna 
called attention to the iron oppression which 
Germany exercises over his native land, and a 
fellow-member whose nationality need not be in- 
dicated said to him — 

^^Dear Colleague, you forget that Germany is 
the power that has saved you. ' ' 

^^If I fell into a river, ^^ replied the other ^^and 
my saviour after pulling me out of the water re- 
fused to let me go, but constantly repeated ^Now 
I have saved your life, you must be my slave,' 
then I would pray God to save me from my saviour 
. . . Stop this rescuing! Enough of this Salva- 
tion!" 

And there in bleeding drops spoke the heart of 
Poland. 



PART II 

THE GERMAN OCCUPATION OF 
POLAND 



PART II 

THE GERMAN OCCUPATION OF i 
POLAND ^ 

CHAPTEE I 

The Russian Peoclamation 

On the 14t]i of Aiigiist7l9i4, the world being then 
at war, the Grand Duke Nicholas, uncle of the 
Tsar and Generalissimo of the Russian forces, is- 
sued the following proclamation on behalf of the 
Crown. It was signed by him and not by the Tsar, 
since international etiquette forbids the Monarch 
of one state to address the subjects of another 
state, and this proclamation was addressed, as will 
be seen, to subjects of Austria and Germany as 
well as to Russian subjects : — 

^^ Poles! The hour has struck in which the 
sacred dream of your fathers and forefathers 
will be realised. A century and a half ago 
the living body of Poland was torn, but her 
soul did not die, sustained as it was by the 
hope that for the Polish people the moment 

135 



136 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

of resurrection would arrive and at tlie same 
time the fraternal reconciliation with the 
Great Eussian Empire. The Russian army 
now brings you the solemn tidings of this rec- 
onciliation. May the boundaries he a/rmihi- 
lated which cut the Polish nation into parts! 

*^May the Poles in Russia unite themselves 
under the sceptre of the Russian Tsar! Under 
this sceptre Poland shall be re-born, free in 
faith, in language, in self-government. 

*^ Russia only expects of you the considera- 
tion due to the rights of those nationalities 
with which you became allied through past 
history. 

**With friendly feelings and cordially-out- 
stretched hands the Great Russian Empire 
steps forward to meet you. The sword that 
conquered the enemy at Griinwald * has not 
grown rusty. From the shores of the Pacific 
Ocean to the Arctic Seas the Russian armies 
are marching. The dawn of a new life is 
breaking for you. May the sign of the Cross 
illuminate this dawn, symbol of the Passion 
and the resurrection of the nations.^' 



» 



It was at the battle of Griinwald (1410) that the Polish 
armies, under Ladislas Jagello, completely defeated the Teutonic 
knights. 



THE RUSSIAN PROCLAMATION 137 
f : 

Now the meaning which it is natural to attach 
to this proclamation about which there is a vague 
and sumptuous magnificence, is that Russia in- 
tended (i) to grant independence to Poland; (ii) 
to restore to it (as it indeed states) freedom in 
religion, in language, and in self-government, 
thereby acknowledging that Poland, in spite of the 
promises made it, had not hitherto enjoyed these 
benefits; and (iii) to unite to it, ^^by the annihila- 
tion of the frontiers w^hich divide it,'' the terri- 
tories which at the three partitions in 1772, 1793 
and 1795, were assigned to Germany and Austria. 
Poland was henceforth to be free and united under 
the suzerainty of the Tsar. Owing to the defeat 
of the Russian armies by those of the Central 
Powers, the Government was never in a position 
to effect this reunion, for a year afterwards 
Galicia and the Kingdom of Poland were in the 
hands of the enemy. 

But during that year no practical steps of any 
serious or sincere sort were taken to give the 
smallest effect to this proclamation, and, without 
cynicism, it seems more reasonable to suppose that 
the motive behind it was in the main a defensive 
one on the part of Russia with ^'disarming in- 
tent.'* Russia was proposing to advance vic- 
toriously on Berlin and Vienna in the crushing 



138 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 



manner of the steam-roller about which our Press 
was once so irresponsibly resonant, and she knew 
very well that to have in the rear of her armies 
a race that for a hundred years had seethed with 
discontent at the withholding of the freedom that 
had been promised it, was to court disaster. It 
would have been necessary for her security to 
leave at least 20 per cent, of her forces to guard 
the lines of communication, and ensure quiet and 
order; moreover, in the Russian armies were en- 
rolled some 800,000 Poles, who were being led 
against the armies of the Central Empires, which 
contained nearly the same number of men of 
their own race, drawn from the districts of Posen, 
Silesia, West Prussia and Galicia, and love of 
Russia, founded on detestation of Germany, had 
to rise superior in the breasts of her Polish sol- 
diers, to love of race. The mention, moreover, 
of Grunwald, and the Grand Duke's confidence 
that the Polish sword had not grown rusty, indi- 
cate that Russia asked for Poland's loyal and 
unstinted military support. The Poles, soldiers 
and civilians alike, were for the moment capable 
of being a grave menace to the Russian arms, and 
this proclamation, endorsed as it soon was by the 
Governments of the Entente, was the surest way 
of commanding their loyalty and co-operation. 



THE RUSSIAN PROCLAMATION ^^9 

In fact, the Grand Duke Nicholas did precisely 
what Alexander I had done a hundred years be- 
fore, when in the Napoleonic wars Poland was 
able to constitute a menace to Russia, and had 
proclaimed the independence of Poland, in order 
to kindle Polish enthusiasm on Russia's behalf. 
On that occasion, Poland, as we have seen, did 
not respond to this invitation, but joined the 
cause of Napoleon, with the result that in place 
of the fulfilment of the fine words, there followed 
for her the Congress of Vienna, which, instead 
of giving her independence, but confirmed the 
partitions and ushered in a century of oppres- 
sion. 

A further point to be noted about this procla- 
mation is that it contains no hint that the prov- 
inces of the ancient republic now part of the 
Russian Empire, such as Lithuania, should be 
included in the reunited Poland to which the 
Grand Duke alluded, or that Russia contemplated 
in the faintest degree placing within the frontiers 
of the new autonomous state those territories 
which for the last hundred years she had incor- 
porated into herself, and which were in fact ethno- 
graphically non-Polish, since the bulk of their in- 
habitants were White Russians or Little Rus- 
sians. The National Democrats, and their allied 



140 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

1 . 

groups also, who for years had worked for the 
unity and independence of Poland, at that date 
made no such claim, though their policy to-day 
includes the reunion with Poland of these prov- 
inces, but they accepted the Grand Duke's mani- 
festo as meaning that Russia intended to reunite 
with the Kingdom of Poland, Prussian Poland 
and Austrian Poland, and to place the whole with 
self-government, under the sceptre of the Tsar. 
Had Russia advanced into Germany and Austria, 
and made good her advance, so that in conjunction 
with Prance and England she could have dictated 
a peace, it is pretty clear that this was what she 
meant to do, and she probably would have been 
obliged to do it, since the Grand Duke's proclama- 
tion as regards Poland was presently endorsed by 
all the Allies. 

Now Russia never had the opportunity of fully 
vindicating her good faith with regard to the 
proclamation, for while she was in a state of war, 
and must needs strain every nerve to the vigorous 
prosecution of that, it would have been unrea- 
sonable to expect her to devote energies to the 
accomplishment of her promise, and within a year 
her armies, as we have noticed, had retreated 
from the Kingdom of Poland and Galicia alto- 
gether, leaving the enemy in possession. But 



THE RUSSIAN PROCLAMATION 141 

during that year the Russian Government, dis- 
trusting perhaps the effect of the Grand Duke's 
proclamation, did not endorse it by any practical 
measure, but on the other hand preserved and 
pursued a policy which was distinctly anti-Po- 
lish. Notices on the railways and in other pub- 
lic places written in Polish were suppressed, and 
the Russian advance through Gahcia was fol- 
lowed by the importation of civil servants from 
Russia to replace Poles. As a guarantee of good 
faith, the Government might at least have begun 
placing Poles in official positions hitherto held 
by Russians, but nothing of the sort was done. 
Up till August, 1915, when the Germans were at 
the gates of Warsaw, the Russian Government 
made no official announcement about Polish inde- 
pendence, nor did they take any practical steps 
to warrant sincerity. All that the Russian Gov- 
ernment did with regard to the fulfilment of the 
Grand Duke's proclamation during that period 
was to nominate a Russo-Polish Commission in 
May, 1915, with the object of elaborating a proj- 
ect of Polish autonomy. There were six Poles 
on this commission, including M. Dmowski and 
Count Wielopolski, and six Russian representa- 
tives under the Presidency of the Prime Minister 
Goremykin. They could not come to any agree- 



im THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

ment, and the Polish members thereupon drew 
up and presented to the Government their own 
proposals. These dealt with two points: (i) im- 
mediate changes in the administration of the 
Kingdom of Poland, (ii) a constitution for Poland 
which recognised her as a separate state, under 
the Russian sceptre. This project was never 
even considered by the Russian Government, and, 
as was only natural, the sincerity of the Grand 
Duke's proclamation came to be seriously ques- 
tioned. But it is most significant that at the mo- 
ment of Germany's advance into Poland, Goremy- 
kin, then Minister of the Interior in Russia, an- 
nounced to the Duma the granting of autonomy 
to Poland. The object of this was perfectly clear : 
now, when the enemy was in possession, the Gov- 
ernment at last confirmed the Grand Duke's prom- 
ises in order to prevent the Poles from embracing 
the cause of the Central Empires and furnishing 
recruits for their armies. The confirmation, in 
fact, of the original proclamation, unrealisable, 
since the German armies were in occupation, was 
made in the same spirit as the proclamation it- 
self. We may then, I think, take it for granted 
that no independent Polish state, to include all 
the territories of ancient Poland, was ever for 
a moment contemplated by Russia, nor demanded 



THE RUSSIAN PROCLAMATION 143 

by Polish Nationalists, and that, as far as practi- 
cal steps can supply a criterion of motive, the 
proclamation of the Grand Duke was little more 
than a defensive measure against Polish disloy- 
alty in the face of the enemy. 

Had there been any seriousness of purpose in 
the Russian Government of granting Poland the 
national rights so long promised her and so long 
withheld, some earnest of that purpose would 
have been given during the year when Russia 
was in a position to do so. Nothing of the sort 
was done, and it was not till Germany was in 
occupation that the independence of Poland was 
announced to the Duma, and then again no hint 
of any reality behind this can be ever so faintly 
detected, for when the Tsar summoned a confer- 
ence in February, 1917, to discuss the constitu- 
tion of Poland, it got no further than to debate 
whether the Polish National prayer might in spe- 
cial circumstances be recited in church! This 
weighty question was left, as far as I can ascer- 
tain, undecided. 

In their retreat the Russian armies did their 
utmost, in obedience to the necessity of the mili- 
tary situation, to render the country a desert in 
front of the advance of the Central Powers. Ac- 



144 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

cording to the report of a Dutch Relief Conunit- 
tee, 5,000 villages were destroyed, two million head 
of cattle and a million horses were requisitioned 
or died from want of fodder, and 400,000 work- 
men were out of work. The Eussians cut down 
trees and dragged them across the fields where 
the crops stood high, thus helping to create the 
famine from which Poland still suffers ; they dis- 
mantled industrial establishments, smashing up 
the machinery and carrying away such as they 
could transport into Russia, and in the midst of 
the desert they had made there were left more 
than a million Polish peasants homeless and abso- 
lutely destitute. Others, the more able-bodied, 
fled in front of the retreating army, and the coun- 
try was stricken with the sufferings and the hor- 
rors that resulted from the debacle of the Russian 
armies. These acts of devastation were, no doubt, 
dictated by the military necessity, but it was no 
wonder that they produced the greatest bitterness 
in the minds of an indigent and starving popula- 
tion, to whom, less than a year before, indepen- 
dence had been promised and the dawn of the 
fulfilment of their national aspirations pro- 
claimed. Those weeks of the retreat from Galicia 
and the Kingdom of Poland did more to embit- 
ter Polish feeling against Russia than decades 



THE RUSSIAN PROCLAMATION 145 

of neglect and misrule. Instead of freedom, this 
military disaster gave them famine, and made a 
desert of the territory that had been promised 
liberty. 

The native Polish population took the German 
entry into Warsaw in silent composure. They 
ignored, they disregarded it, except that in some 
of the streets blinds were drawn down, as if in 
protest or in mourning, when the troops passed. 
Hostile demonstrations were out of the question, 
but assuredly among the mass of the population 
there was no enthusiasm. After the manner in 
which the Russians had treated this unhappy 
country, both during the hundred years of their 
possession and at this crisis, it is no wonder that 
there possibly were, if the German accounts can 
be trusted, certain local exhibitions of thanks- 
giving over the removal of the Russian voke, or 
that on the anniversary of the German entry in 
August, 1916, there was a demonstration, organ- 
ised by the pro-German Club of the Polish state 
at the memorial set up at Warsaw to commemo- 
rate the death of Polish insurrectionists who had 
been shot by the Russians in 1864. Otherwise only 
the Jews, who constitute 35 per cent, of the in- 
habitants of Warsaw, hailed the Germans as de- 
liverers, and on the same day on which the pro- 



146 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

I ■ — 



German Club of the Polish state held their com- 
memoration, we find recorded in the Warschauer 
Tagehlatt, sl. Jewish organ, an enthusiastic cele- 
bration of the German entry, which proclaims that 
this day should be inscribed in golden letters in 
the records of Polish Jews. '^The spirit of Eu- 
rope, ' ' it remarks, * ' entered in contrast to Asiatic 
tyranny,^' and it speaks of the Sporting Clubs, 
the Scout Societies instituted by Germans, in 
which orders are given in Yiddish for the sake of 
the Jews now at length allowed to become mem- 
bers of them. For German administration pro- 
claimed full equality for Jews, gave their children 
religious education, and admitted them to hold 
office in various state departments hitherto not 
open to them. This treatment of the Jews was 
part of German policy to accentuate the acute bad 
feeling already existing between them and the 
Poles, for anything, according to German views, 
which sows discord in the non-German popula- 
tion of her empire is to be encouraged, since it 
relatively increases her own ascendancy. But we 
cannot possibly take these demonstrations as illus- 
trative of the Polish national spirit, for they were 
not of Polish but of Jewish origin. Beyond doubt 
the Poles, by now, bitterly detested the Eussians, 
who had cajoled them with empty promises of 



THE RUSSIAN PROCLAMATION 147 

which the fulfihnent was famine, but they were 
not a whit the more friendly to the invaders. 

Apart from the defeat of the Russian armies, 
Germany and Austria hoped that the acquisition 
of Poland would supply the Central Empires with 
man-power and with foodstuff. In both these re- 
spects they suffered a considerable disappoint- 
ment, for neither came within leagues of their ex- 
pectations. But they used the dearth of supplies 
caused by the destruction in the Russian retreat 
and augmented by the needs of their own armies 
as an instrument whereby they might encourage 
emigration of Poles into Germany for industrial 
work, while to accentuate the sharpness of this in- 
strument both they and the Austrians laid hands 
on such foodstuffs as were available. Before the 
war the production of grain in Russian Poland 
completely covered the country's own consump- 
tion, and a certain amount was exported ; now, ow- 
ing in part to the Russian destruction of crops, 
and in part to this commandeering of supplies, 
there was an acute bread famine. Train-loads of 
potatoes and wild geese left for Vienna, while 
Germany during the ensuing months managed to 
secure 253,000 wagons of provisions, chiefly corn 
and meat, from the districts of Lomza, Plock and 
Kalisch, where the Russian retreat seems to have 



148 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

t 

been too hurried to allow systematic destruction, 
and setting her tabulating statisticians to work 
she calculated that Poland should be able to send 
annually into Germany sixty million eggs and a 
million wild geese. It was also ordained that 
Poland should support the army of occupation, 
and permission was given to soldiers to send par- 
cels of food to their relatives in Germany, the 
contents of which should not be deducted from 
the rations of the recipients. Similarly all cop- 
per, tin, lead and pewter were requisitioned for 
the needs of the army. At the same time large 
quantities of seed-corn were brought into the coun- 
try from Denmark, making a provision for the 
army and possibly for the Poles in future years. 
It is no wonder that, when we consider that 
these levies were made on a population that was 
already starving, the destitution of thousands be- 
came appalling, and in especial the mortality 
among infants. In many towns milk and all fats 
were absolutely non-existent ; we read of children 
so soft of bone that they could not stand upright, 
and of a plague of scurvy in Warsaw, which af- 
fected 90 per cent, of the poorer classes. Food- 
riots were frequent, and were suppressed with 
Prussian thoroughness. Yet when the British 
Foreign Office asked Berlin for a guarantee that 



THE RUSSIAN PROCLAMATION 14.9 

1 

supplies let through the blockade should be used 
for Poland and not for Germany, and that the 
native foodstuffs should not be used for the main- 
tenance of the occupying armies, it was refused. 
Needless to say, a chorus of vituperation burst 
from the Press at British inhumanity, which in- 
humanity consisted precisely in this, namely, that 
the British Government did not see its way to let 
the charity of other countries revictual Germany. 
Such relief as reached Poland by land routes was 
put into the hands of Hindenburg to administer, 
which augured well for the comfort of German 
soldiers, if not for that of those for whom it was 
sent. 

This policy of starving the Poles in order to 
supply their own wants both Germany and Austria 
continued brutally to exercise, and as late as No- 
vember, 1917, innumerable trucks of fruit, com 
and potatoes were passing out of the starving 
country into that of its occupiers. We may judge 
from this what fraction of foreign supplies would 
have been allowed to feed the people for whom 
they were to be sent.* 

* Galieia was little better off than Poland, and the same com- 
mandeering of supplies has gone on there ever since; as late as 
December, 1917, a Polish deputy, Stapinski, called attention to it 
in the Eeichsrat. 



150 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

I—— — ■ — — . — > 

The starvation which was intended to further 
Polish emigration into Germany failed in its ef- 
fect, and we find that only about 21,000 Poles were 
induced to go, of whom a certain number were 
taken by force. They did not respond at all 
eagerly to the bait of ''peace and plenty'^ in the 
Fatherland, and they viewed with a suspicion that 
their ''deliverers'' could ill understand, letters 
purporting to come from their countrymen there 
who spoke of the delightful conditions prevailing 
in Germany. On one occasion von Beseler, the 
German Governor of Warsaw, sent such an ac- 
count to the Editor of a Warsaw paper, who re- 
fused to publish it unless he inserted a footnote 
saying that the entire communication came from 
the German military authorities. For this con- 
tumacy he was fined 4,000 marks. Those of the 
Poles who went were, like the Jews and natives 
from Lithuania, not permitted to return, and we 
hear of some of them at work in the Zeppelin 
sheds at Oldenburg, while interned Polish pris- 
oners were trained and sent to the front. 

Similarly the man-power desired by the Ger- 
mans for recruits in the armies of the Central Em- 
pires was not forthcoming at all. Germany had 
made a grave miscalculation, for though there 
were tens of thousands of Poles ready to fight 



THE RUSSIAN PROCLAMATION 151 

against Russia from patriotic motives, there was 
not one per cent, of these who were ready to fight 
for Germany. Germany, according to the official 
German view, had delivered the country from the 
Russian yoke, and had zealously proclaimed her 
liberating role. But what she failed to under- 
stand was that the national sentiment of Poland 
had no greater affection for Germany than it had 
for Russia. There were few, except the Jews in 
Poland, who looked on Germany as their deliverer, 
though Germany made the most of the very grati- 
fying remarks which they addressed to the Kaiser 
about the invincibility of his armies. But as a 
practical test of the extent and depth of such emo- 
tions, the result of recruiting for purely German 
purposes after the declaration of the Polish state 
was not encouraging. For the Poles resented the 
Germanization of Posen and Silesia just as much 
as they resented the Russification of other parts 
of the ancient realm. The result, in any case, of 
the appeal to die, not for Poland but for Germany, 
as we shall see later, was highly unsatisfactory. 
The occupied territories made no response what- 
ever. 



CHAPTER II 

The Fiest Year of the German Occupation 

Germany seems to have realised from the first 
that the management of the occupied territory of 
the Kingdom of Poland would present difficulties, 
and, apart from its systematic starvation, necessi- 
tated by the needs of her armies, and her desire 
for industrial emigration into Germany, she 
adopted a wiser policy than she did, for instance, 
in Belgium. Warsaw was taken on August 5, 
1915, and schools were reopened there by August 
25th, and both in primary and secondary classes 
Germany allowed Polish to be taught. German 
and Polish in fact were compulsory languages in 
schools, and German was taught by Poles. Rus- 
sian, however, was completely prohibited, and no 
books or papers other than those that had passed 
a German censorship were allowed to be intro- 
duced into the territory at all. Similarly as an 
anti-Russian measure she permitted the Byzantine 
ritual for Greek Catholics, which Russia had pro- 
hibited. Now Germany had barred the teaching 

152 



FIRST YEAR OF GERMAN OCCUPATION 153 

f — 

of Polish in schools in the Duchy of Posen and 
Prussian Poland, but then she had definitely an- 
nexed them and incorporated them into the Ger- 
man Empire, and any attempt at conciliation 
there was mere weakness. But she was still doubt- 
ful whether this fresh conquest was ripe for a 
similar coercion, and in the interval she tried with 
an amazingly small degree of success to estab- 
lish friendly relations with the inhabitants. 

Russia, moreover, in this summer of 1915, was 
far from disabled, and there might still be severe 
fighting on the Eastern frontiers of Poland. It 
was wise therefore, firstly, so long as no sacrifice 
was entailed, to seem to adopt a more liberal pol- 
icy of government than Poland had previously 
enjoyed, in order, if possible, to make the inhab- 
itants of the occupied territories better content 
with her rule than that of Russia. Just as in 1914 
the motive of the Grand Duke 's proclamation was 
to avoid having a disloyal and discontented popu- 
lation in the rear of the Russian armies, so in 
1915 such indulgences as were given to the Poles 
were granted by Germany for precisely the same 
reason as they had been dangled in front of them 
before by the Russians. Secondly, a fresh invamon 
of the occupied territory from the East was still 
to be reckoned with, and her armies might be 



154^ THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

1 — 

pushed back. In tliat case she would have se- 
cured, once more in the rear of the enemy's line, 
a population that found it had fared better under 
her temporary rule than under that of the power 
which had laid their country waste. A third al- 
ternative was that she would remain permanently 
in possession of Poland, and so she proceeded 
apace with her usual penetrative work, on which 
we will touch presently. 

But what chiefly occupied her with regard to 
Poland was the determination of what she wanted 
to do with it. Given that Poland was not going 
to be reconquered by Russia, there were the pro- 
posals of her Austrian Allies, who were meditat- 
ing a programme far more attractive to the Poles 
than was any arrangement which Germany had 
the slightest intention of proposing, to be digested 
and disposed of. In brief, this ^^ Austrian solu- 
tion'' was as follows the Kingdom of Poland, 
hitherto Eussian, should be joined to Galicia, 
ceded by Austria, to form a self-governing state 
under a Habsburg prince, who, being Catholic, 
would be acceptable to the nation. This scheme 
obtained some adherents among the Poles, espe- 
cially the Poles of Galicia of the class whose inter- 
ests were bound up with the Austrian government, 
for during the last fifty years they had received 



FIRST YEAR OF GERMAN OCCUPATION 155 

far better treatment at the hands of Austria than 
either Russia or Germany had granted to the 
provinces that fell to them through the partions. 
Hatred of Russia combined with hatred of Ger- 
many, who made no corresponding proposal about 
the cession of the Duchy of Posen, inclined many 
of the more moderate Polish groups, such as the 
League of the Polish State, to welcome some such 
Austrian solution as the best; ihat they were 
likely to secure, and almost immediately after the 
German occupation of Warsaw the Austrian gov- 
ernment published the manifesto of the Galician 
Supreme National Council, which set forth the 
general terms of the proposed arrangement. Ger- 
many strongly objected to this as inopportune in 
its appearance, the inopportunity chiefly consist- 
ing in the fact that she had not sanctioned it, and 
did not mean to. In consequence, a similar resolu- 
tion of the Polish Parliamentary Club in Vienna 
was only privately circulated. Simultaneously 
Count Julius Audrassy announced that the Cen- 
tral Powers were agreed that Poland should never 
go back to Russia, that a new partion would be 
dangerous, and that she should form a political 
body with assured individuality as a state with a 
Polish government. This was confirmed in De- 
cember, 1915, by a joint declaration of Baron 



156 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

Burian and Bethmann-Hollweg. As we shall see, 
the consideration of the Austrian solution, and 
the discussion over it between the two Central 
Empires lasted more than a year before Germany 
finally vetoed it, declaring on November 5, 1916, 
to the Poles of the Kingdom of Poland, the estab- 
lishment of a State of their own. From the first 
she viewed this Austrian solution with distrust, 
as checking her own development Eastwards, for 
it was a very different matter from creating a 
state which she herself could penetrate, easily rid- 
dling it in an economical and political, and, in spite 
of the fiasco she was about to experience with re- 
gard to recruiting, in a military sense. But it 
was objectionable to contemplate a new Kingdom 
of Poland, subject to a Habsburg prince, inter- 
posed in the eastward march of German influence. 
Much might be gained, no doubt, by the with- 
drawal of Polish representatives from the Reichs- 
rat who would henceforth sit in the Diet of the 
new state, thus increasing German preponderance 
in the Reichsrat. Indeed, since the occupation of 
part of Russian Poland by Austria, many high 
Polish officials in Vienna had been drafted into 
the Administration of Poland, and their places 
had been taken by Germans, but Germany was 
uneasy about it all. Possibly Austria, with this 



FIRST YEAR OF GERMAN OCCUPATION 157 

fresh accession of territory, and the chance of 
raising an army where Germany had failed, might 
assert an inconvenient independence of Berlin, 
whereas at present she was bound to her. For the 
dependence of Austria on Germany, her indissolu- 
ble Alliance, which amounts to exactly the same 
thing as her complete subjugation, was a thing not 
lightly to be risked. 

But though the solution of the Polish question 
might wait, there was no reason why a revised 
system of taxes should do so, and by March, 1916, 
Germany was in receipt of a very handsome rev- 
enue from her occupied territory. The chief of 
these taxes were as follows : 

(i.) She levied an annual contribution of 
about 50,000 roubles on many towns, as she 
had done in Belgium. 

(ii.) She passed a regulation that every 
Pole over 15 years of age must take out an 
annual passport. For this various sums were 
charged up to five roubles a head, and 
this tax probably produced about 1,000,000 
roubles. 

(iii.) She levied a land-tax, a personal 
property tax, and an ** ordinary'' tax, pro- 



158 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

ducing 34,000,000 roubles. (What the ^^ ordi- 
nary '' tax was, does not appear. Probably it 
was a tax on the right of individual exist- 
ence.) 

(iv.) She instituted additional taxes, i.e., 
stamp tax, dog tax, fire-arm tax, producing 
about 8,000,000 roubles. 

(v.) She levied certain permanent monthly 
taxes on imports, etc. 

(vi.) She insisted that sums due to Russian 
custom authorities from merchants in the oc- 
cupied territory should be paid to her, other- 
wise the goods for which these duties were 
liable would be confiscated. 

In fine, it was close on a year and a half after 
the occupation of Warsaw by the Germans that 
any sort of announcement was made by the Cen- 
tral Empires with regard to the constitution of 
Poland, and even when that came, as we shall 
see, the proposed national constitution was noth- 
ing more than an impotent conjugation of irre- 
concilable units who, incapable of legislation, 
could only quarrel among themselves. Here and 
there small local governments had been formed. 



FIRST YEAR OF GERMAN OCCUPATION 159 

as for instance at Lodz, where Hindenburg, in 
July, 1916, instituted the following: 

(i.) A municipal board of ten members, two 
of whom were Poles, the rest Jews or Ger- 
mans. 

(ii.) A municipal council of thirty-six, of 
whom twelve were Poles, twelve Jews, and 
twelve Germans. 

Such a body, it will be agreed, did not do much 
for local Polish autonomy, since the Jews in Po- 
land were notoriously ? pro-German. But then 
Germany was not ^^ouf for doing much for Po- 
lish autonomy. Her main object during the first 
year of her occupation was to mark time and to 
await the developments of her military and other 
operations in Eussia. She wanted to avoid 
trouble with the Poles, to avoid any measures that 
should conceivably weaken her grip and strengthen 
that of Austria, and, perhaps above all, to avoid 
anything that should tend to throw the Poles 
back into sympathy with Russia, as her forcible 
annexation of the country, or her partitioning 
it again between herself and Austria would have 
done. Probably (for Russia at that date was a 
long way from being beaten) she thought she 



160 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

would be best employed in peaceful penetration, 
which facilitated business between the two coun- 
tries. 

She started a German Chamber of Commerce 
with its head-quarters at Warsaw, in order to en- 
courage trade between Poland and Germany in a 
manner most profitable to the latter. Poles who 
wished to become members of it had first to give 
a guarantee of their German proclivities by sub- 
scribing to the War-Loan, or contracting for the 
German army; they then on payment of an an- 
nual subscription of 100 marks, could put their 
wares on the German market. That encouraged 
Poles to enter into relations with Germany, and 
Germany, entering into similar relations with 
Poland, flooded the country with hardware and 
other goods. She Germanized Warsaw, and a 
letter from a German resident there in 1916 
proudly describes how every week it became more 
like a garrison town of the Fatherland. There 
was a government band which played in public, 
there were tennis clubs started, the population 
was vaccinated, a more sanitary drainage sys- 
tem was introduced, and many new German news- 
papers appeared. Vaccination and sporting clubs 
and drainage were, of course, amply looked after 



FIRST YEAR OF GERMAN OCCUPATION 161 

in Warsaw before, and this account is but part of 
Germany's ^^ make-up'' as the deliverer of un- 
happy Poland from the barbarous conditions in 
which she had lived under Russian rule. Else- 
where, as at Bialystok, propagandist newspapers 
were printed in Polish, German and Yiddish * the 
latter for the sake of the large Jewish population 
there. There was a lack of bullion in Poland, for 
the Russians had broken into banks both there and 
in Galicia on their retreat, and had carried off 
what they could find, and so Germany introduced 
a worthless iron coinage, which obtained currency 
in a land wholly henuned in by the armies of her 
and her allies. In order to confirm her grip she 
took over the administration of many Polish or- 
ganizations, and closed others in order to with- 
draw the executive from native hands. This was 
not always a success, for, when in January, 1916, 
she closed the '^Central Citizen Committee" in 
Warsaw, which regulated provisions, civic guard, 
Bureau for refugees, etc., the most abysmal con- 
fusion resulted, and she was forced to re-establish 
it again. But this time she put it in the hands 

* Yiddish, it may be explained, is not Hebrew at all, as is 
popularly supposed, though it is printed in Hebrew characters. 
It is really a Swabian dialect, and 70 per cent, of the words in it 
are German. Its more scientific name is Judaeo -Germanic. 



162 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

of Count Ronikier, one of her most reliable parti- 
sans. 

Altogether there was plenty to do in the way of 
organization, in opening High Schools, in estab- 
lishing banks, in bringing in notaries and law- 
yers from Germany, in abolishing Polish juries, 
in furthering propagandist campaigns, and though 
once or twice she had to instruct her police to 
watch Polish students at Warsaw, who might 
be dangerous, and send some to other educational 
establishments in Galicia, in Silesia and occa- 
sionally to prison, while as a further Germani- 
zing measure she imported into the University 
German students, she did not bring any intolera- 
ble hand of oppression on the peoples of the oc- 
cupied territories, and the instances of her in- 
troducing forced labour where her schemes for 
voluntary labour had failed, are the exception 
rather than the rule.* But, while the future was 

* In certain districts, notably that of Kielce, there was a con- 
siderable amount of forced labour, for men were badly wanted to 
work in the unexploited mines there. Similarly we find that an 
appeal was made to the Pope in November, 1916, asking whether 
such compulsion was not an act of ' ' intolerable tyranny. ' ' After 
a considerable delay His Holiness replied that ''as a neutral" he 
could not interfere in such internal questions. But in spite of 
such instances we shall probably be right to conclude that Ger- 
many did not make forced levies for labour to any considerable 
extent. 



FIRST YEAR OF GERMAN OCCUPATION 16S 

still so uncertain, and the difficulties of any solu- 
tion of the Polish question so immense, she de- 
layed any decision on that point until she could 
give it exhaustive consideration. In the interval 
she let her fresh provinces enjoy such liberty as 
was not dangerous to her own grip, and consider- 
ably relaxed the rigour of her early days of occu- 
pation, for she did not want a rebellious popula- 
tion in the rear of her Eastern armies. 

Lithuania, meantime, which the German armies 
had likewise overrun, was suffering under a far 
more rigid and tyrannical rule, for Germany had 
no notion when first she invaded it, that she would 
be able to retain it, but expected eventually to 
give it back to Russia ; Poland, on the other hand, 
forming as it does a huge salient in the Eastern 
frontier of Germany, she and Austria alike were 
determined, if possible, never to allow to pass 
back under Russian rule. In the interval there- 
fore, while Lithuania was in her hands, she de- 
termined to get as much out of it as she pos- 
sibly could, and return it to Russia in a com- 
pletely impoverished and disorganized condition. 
She had woods felled everywhere to supply her 
with timber, and compelled the peasants to give 
up to feed her armies the wheat which they had 



164 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

stored for the spring sowing. The army of oc- 
cupation was entirely supported by the starving 
country; all schools were closed except for the 
teaching of German^ and the whole province was 
divided up into small districts, and the inhabitants 
forbidden to pass from one into another. Whole- 
sale deportations were made for forced labour, 
and the peasants were sent to dig trenches in the 
firing line. All men in the government of Vilna, 
between the ages of 17 and 60, were called on 
to report themselves and be examined as to their 
fitness for work. It was possible for the more 
well-to-do to get exemption for six months, on 
payment of £30, which, it was announced, would 
be spent in procuring warm clothes for the work- 
ers and maintenance for their families. Simi- 
larly, with a view of getting all that could be 
squeezed out of the country, Germany raised 
money there directly, and we find the Governor 
of Vilna issuing a proclamation for a loan of a 
million roubles. It was to carry interest at the 
rate of 5 per cent., and to be paid off at par five 
years after the end of the war. Should this loan 
not be subscribed, the naive prospectus briefly 
announced that any deficiency would be made good 
by compulsion, and the money seized would neither 
carry interest nor be repaid at all. With the 



FIRST YEAR OF GERMAN OCCUPATION 165 

same end in view, namely, that of giving back 
Lithuania in as troublous a condition as possible, 
she encouraged quarrels between the Bieloruski 
(White Russian) Committee, who demanded au- 
tonomy and separation from Russia, and the 
Union of Peasants, which demanded that the coun- 
try should form part of Russia. 

Equally marked and equally significant was her 
treatment of Lithuanian Jews. Whereas in Po- 
land, which she hoped to retain, she removed the 
disabilities under which they had lived, and recog- 
nised their importance to herself as Germanizing 
agents, knowing how powerful and numerous they 
were (for they form 14% per cent, of the entire 
population of the Kingdom of Poland, and the 
large majority of Polish trade passes through 
their hands) here in Lithuania, which at first she 
did not dream of being able to retain, she had no 
use for them except to get as much as she pos- 
sibly could out of them. The most of the cash 
in the country was in their hands, and she resorted 
to a hundred tricks for getting hold of it, such 
as printing innumerable regulations /about the 
tenure and lighting of houses, etc., in German 
only, and then fining the Jews, who could not 
read German, for breaking them. In the same 
way, when volunteers for labour in Germany did 



166 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

not readily come forward, since labour in Ger- 
many meant working in munition factories, which 
was unlawful for Russian subjects, she invented 
out of those who did not offer themselves, a class 
of '* suspicious persons," whom she forcibly ex- 
patriated. The hours of work were twelve per 
diem, with an elaborate system of fines and im- 
prisonment for unpunctuality. Wages were 200 
marks a month, which proved to be not so liberal 
since 100 marks per month were automatically 
deducted for board and lodging, by which was 
meant six feet of floor space in a barrack, and a 
small allowance for potatoes. Out of the remain- 
ing hundred marks, the workmen had to pay both 
German and Lithuanian taxes, which latter the 
Germans were kind enough to collect. What re- 
mained was then paid, not to the workman, but to 
his ^^ community" in Lithuania, and was, on ar- 
rival there, confiscated by the military authorities. 
Thus Germany got her munition work done for the 
cost of board and lodging. 

But as the months went on, and Russia showed 
no sign of a returning vigour that might snatch 
Lithuania again out of German hands, Germany 
began to consider what she would do with it in 
case she could retain it. In this connection an 
inspired utterance of that very astute politician, 



FIRST YEAR OF GERMAN OCCUPATION 167 

{ ^^ 

Herr Gothein, published in the autumn of 1916. 
shortly before a constitution — of a kind — was 
granted to Poland, is of interest. After giving 
figures that show the increase of Poles in Prus- 
sian Poland, he says ^^If Poland should become 
an independent state, it would be desirable to as- 
sign her a special sphere for internal coloniza- 
tion, and for this purpose Lithuania and Cour- 
land would come under discussion." 

Now, this has a two-fold significance. On the 
one hand it was put forth as a bait to Poland, 
for it hinted at the possibility of Lithuania being 
added to a PoKsh state (thus gratifying Polish 
Imperialistic ambitions), and on the other it 
shews that the creation of a large ^ ' independent ' ' 
Poland formed at the expense of Russia, and in 
reality dependent on Germany was already under 
consideration in anticipation, it would seem, of 
the event that has since occurred, namely, the 
total collapse of Russia. Mittel-Europa, in fact, 
was broad awake, and its sagacity proved to be 
Justified ' by what subsequently happened. For 
the collapse of Russia brought with it condi- 
tions more favourable than Germany could then 
have anticipated, for she never guessed how com* 
plete the collapse would be, and these conditions 
bear directly on her plans for Lithuania, which 



168 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

at the present time (April, 1918) she certainly 
wants to retain under her direct control. There 
are two reasons for this, the first that the Ukraine 
is (in spite of its independence) in her hands, and 
Lithuania forms a convenient bridge to link it up 
with her. It was not therefore surprising to find 
the Lokal-Aneeiger inspired to say (March 9th) 
that Lithuania was not ripe for independence, 
since if left to herself, she would become depend- 
ent on Poland. 

The second reason is that Lithuania forms a 
bridge to Courland, the Landesrat of which sent 
the following almost unanimous resolution to Ber- 
lin in March, 1918 :— 

(i.) It asks the German Emperor to accept 
the Ducal Crown of Courland. 

(ii.) It wishes to connect Courland as 
closely as possible with Germany by conven- 
tions covering affairs of army, customs, trade, 
railway, coinage, and law. 

(iii.) It expresses a hope that all the Baltic 
country will be united politically with Ger- 
many. 

On this the Lohal Anzeiger frankly says that if 
Courland wants to become part of Germany by 



FIRST YEAR OF GERMAN OCCUPATION 169 

expressed self-determination, Lithuania must 
necessarily become German too. The Emperor, 
in reply to the Courland resolution, expressed his 
liveliest gratification at these flattering remarks, 
but with an unusual modesty did not actually ac- 
cept either the Ducal Crown or the allegiance of 
Courland, though recognizing the re-created Duke- 
dom of Courland, as a free and independent Duke- 
dom, and assuring it of the protection of the Ger- 
man Empire. In other words, it looks as if what 
Germany is now contemplating is that her sphere 
of influence should embrace Courland, Lithuania, 
and the Ukraine. In this case, Austria would 
probably be given the greater part of the Kingdom 
of Poland, to unite with Galicia, while the rest 
would go to Germany. There are, at any rate, in- 
dications that this programme is favoured by 
Germany. 



CHAPTER III 



ATTEMPTED SOLUTIONS 



All this year then the occupying powers could 
come to no decision about the constitution of Po- 
land, Austria made proposal after proposal, lean- 
ing towards the 'Austrian Solution,' to each of 
which Germany demurred, on the ground that any 
such arrangement would give too great a prepon- 
derance to her Ally. Also Grerman opinion — that 
is to say, the opinion of the governing classes in 
Germany — was crucially divided. Bethmann- 
Hollweg, for instance, was in favour of trans- 
forming Poland into a sort of buffer-state be- 
tween Russia (which was not yet disintegrated) 
and Germany, giving her some semblance of in- 
dependence, but really placing her under the po- 
litical and economical control of Berlin. To this 
arrangement Austria objected, as did also the 
more pronouncedly Junker party in Germany it- 
self, which, under the lead of the Crown Prince 
and Hindenburg, preferred open annexation, not 
of Poland only, but of Lithuania and Courland. 

170 



ATTEMPTED SOLUTIONS 171 

Other 'orientations' in Germany favoured a fresh 
partition of the Kingdom of Poland, assigning to 
Germany some three millions of its inhabitants, 
and leaving the remainder to Austria. There 
would follow a fresh partition of Galicia, of which 
the Western part would go to Austria and the 
Eastern be joined on to the government of Cholm. 
This was tantamount to a fresh partition of Po- 
land, to which Count Audrassy was (very rightly) 
opposed from the point of view of the Central 
Empires, saying that such an arrangement would 
but throw Poland back into Russian arms. From 
a military point of view the advantages of com- 
plete annexation, with this further partition, were 
to be found in the rectification of Germany's East- 
em frontier, in which the Kingdom of Poland at 
present forms a huge salient ; politically, it would 
result in the complete destruction of Polish na- 
tionality. On the other hand politicians who fa- 
voured the establishment of a new state depen- 
dent on Germany, argued that annexation would 
merely increase the influence of the Polish ele- 
ment in the German Empire, in which already 
there were incorporated 4,000,000 Poles. They 
therefore worked for a small weak Polish state, 
under the military and political control of Ger- 
many, the weakness of which would be accentuated 



172 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

by the large number of Jews, to whom they would 
give a separate national existence, and use as Ger- 
manizing agents. Thus the danger of a strength- 
ened Polish influence within the empire would be 
avoided, and Polish nationality would be gradually 
crippled. As a counterblast, as mild as the re- 
mote bleating of a sheep, against any arrange- 
ment of the sort being made, the Duma, with un- 
conscious humour, proposed a complete dismem- 
berment of Germany, and reiterated the mean- 
ingless phrase about the re-union of Poland, over 
which Russia had no longer the smallest control. 
Poland, in fact, was being wooed by both the 
Central Empires, not so much, perhaps, as a de- 
sirable maiden, but as a fly that hovered between 
the webs of two spiders, and Austria, as a meas- 
ure of enticement, ceded the district of Cholm 
back to Poland. But this scheme of uniting Galicia 
with Russian Poland, under a Habsburg regent 
was not, as we have seen, acceptable to Germany, 
particularly when Austria suggested that the 
Duchy of Posen should also become part of the 
new independent kingdom. There was a certain 
equity about the suggestion, for if Austria con- 
tributed Galicia, it was but reasonable that Ger- 
many should make some corresponding cession. 
But Germany was not on the look-out for equitable 



ATTEMPTED SOLUTIONS 173 

— 1 

arrangements : she foresaw that it would be neces- 
sary to grant some sort of constitution to the oc- 
cupied territory, and very likely to throw in the 
adjective 'independent,' but the independence that 
she designed connoted a dependence on herself, 
and as largely as possible a measure of indepen- 
dence with respect to Austria. She did not, either^ 
look with any favour on Austria's selection of a 
regent, for Austria had tentatively selected the 
Archduke Charles, who had married his two 
daughters to Polish nobles, namely, Prince Dom- 
inic Radziwill and Prince Czartoryski, and him- 
self lived in Galicia, spoke Polish and was of 
strong Polish sympathies. So from time to time 
she threw out the name of a German candidate, 
suggesting, for instance. Prince Leopold of Ba- 
varia and Prince Eitel Friedrich, the Kaiser's 
second son. Once during the summer of 1916, 
Germany apparently made up her mind on a com- 
promise, and settled to proclaim Prince Leopold 
as regent and to accept the rest of the Austrian 
solution with him as counter-weight, and the 
Chancellor went to Vienna to conclude matters, 
in the hope that Germany would be able to raise 
at least half a million men for her armies on the 
enthusiasm aroused by this proclamation. But the 
Emperor Franz Joseph roundly told him that 



174 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

such an arrangement would cause an insurrection 
in Poland, and Germany had to yield. In fact a 
German prince on the throne of Poland was as 
unacceptable to Austria as an Austrian prince to 
Germany, or either an Austrian or German prince 
to the national sentiment of Poland. Indeed, the 
solution as to the choice of a regent for Poland 
has not yet been solved, and is likely to remain 
insoluble, unless some military or internal crisis 
tightens Germany's grip on Austria, who may then 
be forced to accept a German nominee. 

On the other hand, though the joining of Galicia 
to Poland, under a Habsburg regent, who at any 
rate would be more acceptable to a Catholic coun- 
try * than any one whom Germany could suggest, 
would give a preponderating influence to Austria 
in Polish affairs, Germany saw that certain equal- 
izing adjustments might be made here. Since the 
new state would have a large measure of auton- 
omy, it was only reasonable that the Poles who 

* Too mucli stress, however, must not be laid on the force of 
religious conviction in Poland, as the follovraig incident shews. 
Greneral von Beseler made an order not long ago that German 
should be used as the language of instruction in Protestant schools 
in Warsaw, since Germany claimed as German, children who were 
of the German and not of the Polish national creed. A certain 
Dr. Machlejd, a pastor of Lutheran theology, protested against 
this, and pointed out that if it was insisted on, it would be per- 
fectly easy for the children to become Eoman Catholics. 



ATTEMPTED SOLUTIONS 175 

I 

sat in the Eeichsrat should sit there no longer, 
for the Polish membership would be localized in 
the Senate or Diet (or whatever form of Govern- 
ment the ''Austrian Solution" should give to Po- 
land), and Germany foresaw an accession of seats 
in the Reichsrat that would increase her prepon- 
derance there over Czechs and Slovenes. But 
against the increased preponderance of the Ger- 
man element in the Reichsrat must be set the fact 
that with the establishment of the new state Po- 
land-cum-Galicia, the Reichsrat, instead of repre- 
senting half the Dual Monarchy would for the 
future represent only a third. More than once 
during this year she came near to accepting some 
sort of Austrian Solution, always providing that 
there should be no question of her giving up any 
part of Germany at all, as a compensation for 
Austria's loss of Galicia. Indeed, she could not 
accept the formula "los von Galizien": she re- 
ferred to it as the acquisition of Poland. Ger- 
many, in fact, during the whole of this period 
was cudgelling her brains for a solution that would 
be wholly favourable to herself. 

A point on which the two Central Empires were 
quite agreed — indeed, this is the only point on 
which they were agreed as regards the future of 
Poland — ^was that it must never again come within 



176 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

the sphere of Kussian influence. While Russia 
was still a power to be reckoned with, Germany 
contemplated a Poland with some vague measure 
of autonomy and possibly even a Poland with 
access to the Baltic, not, it is hardly necessary to 
say, the Dantzig access, but an access through 
Courland. Some sort of buffer state, leaning on 
her, with a function similar to what she would 
desire to establish in Belgium with respect to 
France, was not inacceptable to her as existent 
between her and Russia. Lithuania and the north- 
ern part of the Kingdom of Poland would answer 
the purpose. Austria would have liked precisely 
the same thing, but in this case the Kingdom of 
Poland and Galicia would make the buffer for her, 
while Germany wanted the buffer further north. 
Both were agreed (or so it seems) on having a 
Poland with some sort of nominal independence 
interposed between them and the power that they 
then still feared, but they kept shifting the pro- 
posed site of this bolster like uneasy bedfellows. 
Furthermore, Germany was in the fortunate posi- 
tion of a potential blackmailer; her armies had 
already saved Austria from what, but for her, 
would have been an irresistible Russian advance 
through Galicia, and Russia was still powerful 
and coherent enough to advance there again. 



ATTEMPTED SOLUTIONS 177 

Should that occur, and should Germany refuse to 
threaten the Russian right flank, as she had done 
before, Austria would be in a very uncomfortable 
place indeed. The defeat of Austria, no doubt, 
would seriously menace Germany in this case, but 
Austria's ^^turn" would come first. This consti- 
tuted a decent blackmailing case with regard to 
the disposition of the bolster. 

Given some settlement of that, they were both 
determined in unbreakable harmony that Russia 
should not have a friend in Poland. True to her 
dilatory nature which has always locked the stable- 
door long after the horse has been stolen, Russia 
who, up till the last moment when she was finally 
swept out of Poland had always had the oppor- 
tunity of appearing desirous to substantiate the 
Grand Duke Nicholas' promise on behalf of the 
Crown, and of feeding the horse while it was in 
the Russian stable, began to show it — only show it 
— bushels of oats after it had been stolen, and 
had passed out of the stable altogether. What 
prompted this belated exhibition of oats was the 
action of M. Dmowski on behalf of the Polish na- 
tional Committee in Petrograd. As leader of the 
National Democrats, he determined to bring pres- 
sure on Russia by means of enlisting the sym- 
pathy of the Western Entente powers for Po- 



178 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

I 

land, went to Paris and presented a memorandum 
to M. Isvolsky, the Russian Ambassador there. 
The chief points in this were — 

(i) It is in the interest of all the nations 
menaced by Germany to reunite the dismem- 
bered portions of Poland in one free state, 
and to give it complete liberty to organize 
its national forces and oppose them to the 
German peril. 

(ii) The Poles, who form a people more 
numerous and more advanced than any of the 
smaller nationalities of Central Europe and 
the Balkans, have the same right as they to 
be an independent national state, and they 
cannot in conscience renounce this right which 
has been recognised by all the other nationali- 
ties. 

(iii) By recognising this right Russia and 
her Allies would arouse the enthusiasm and 
suppress at the same time the suspicion of 
other nationalities who are solicitous for their 
independence, and who would all then rise 
against Germany. 

The precise application of this last clause is 
not very apparent (it refers, I imagine, to Balkan 



ATTEMPTED SOLUTIONS 179 

states), but this memorandum and the action of 
M. Dmowski in enlisting the sympathies of Paris 
and London much impressed the Russian Govern- 
ment, and in especial Sazonotf , who thought it was 
necessary for Russia to settle the Polish ques- 
tion at once on Russian lines, for fear of its be- 
coming an international question. Towards the 
end of April, accordingly, he presented a memo- 
randum to the Tsar, urging that the Polish ques- 
tion should be determined without delay, since not 
only Germany and Austria were preparing a solu- 
tion of it, but the Western powers of the Entente 
were also being interested in it. With this memo- 
randum Sazonoff presented the Tsar with a proj- 
ect for Polish autonomy. 

In July, 1916, this project of Polish autonomy 
was discussed in a Ministerial Council at Petro- 
grad, and the idea of a Poland unconnected with 
Russia was dismissed as impossible. Of all the 
Cabinet at Petrograd at that date, Sazonoff was 
the only man who realised that to win Polish alle- 
giance back for Russia it was necessary not only 
to make promises but to do something as earnest 
of their fulfilment, such as the amelioration of 
the misery of the Poles then in Russia, or to make 
some solemn reiteration on the part of Russia 
with regard to Polish independence. His mo- 



180 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

tives seem to have been those of a keen Russian 
nationalist, desirous of gratifying Polish aspira- 
tions in order to secure Poland ^s adhesion to 
Russia, and at the same time to prevent the Po- 
lish question becoming an international interest. 
At this Council he came to loggerheads ?with 
Stiirmer, whose s^nnpathies with Germany were 
notorious, and who, in opposition to Sazonoff^s 
policy, persuaded the Tsar to take no definite 
step at all in the Polish question, thus playing 
the German game and helping to alienate Polish 
sympathies from Russia altogether. The upshot 
was that Sazonoif sent in his resignation or, as 
there is good reason to believe, was dismissed, 
and Germany scored another signal victory, from 
the Mittel-Europa point of view, in the reten- 
tion of Stiirmer, a German agent, in the Russian 
Cabinet. 

At once a reactionary^ tendency set in in Rus- 
sia: it was argued (here was the voice of Stiir- 
mer) that the Russian military situation was ex- 
cellent, and that Germany was weakening. As 
a corollary it followed that the proposed union 
of Poland (i.e. the formation of an independent 
kingdom consisting of German, Austrian and Rus- 
sian Poland) was of no profit to Russia: Russia 
would have united Poland only to lose Poland. 



ATTEMPTED SOLUTIONS 181 

This view, of course, finally disposed of any sig- 
nificance that conld be attached to the Grand 
Duke's proclamation. It had resulted in nothing 
hitherto: now it was simply torn to shreds. ^^We 
have been led into this war/' said Stiirmer's 
voice, "against our national interests.' ' That one 
sentence gives the measure of the German pene- 
tration into Russia, hitherto unsuspected, and not 
recognised even then. 

So, under German dictation, the friendly hands 
which Russia seemed to desire to put out to Po- 
land, though long after the time for such mer^ 
gesture was past, were covered with German 
gloves, and held the dagger which should stab 
the very heart of all real Polish national senti- 
ment. On August 12th, 1916, there was circulated 
a private draft concerning the constitution of Po- 
land, which was a miracle of efficient composition, 
seeing that its object was to alienate the Poles 
from Russia. The provisions in it that are of in- 
terest are the following — 

(i) A united Kingdom of Poland to be 
formed with its own Diet. 

(ii) Questions concerned with the interests 
of all subjects of the Tsar, including Poles, to 



182 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

be decided by the Imperial Houses of Parlia- 
ment. 

(iii) The state language of United Poland 
to be Polish. Eussian to be taught in schools. 

(iv) Frontiers of the new Polish state to be 
determined after the war. 

Surely there was the German leaven beginning 
to work. None knew better than she that this 
sort of thing was the precise and perfect way of 
alienating Poland from Russia, and embittering 
Polish feeling : she could not have drafted a more 
satisfactory proposal herself at Berlin. It prom- 
ised nothing except a Diet, the functions of which 
were left entirely vague. For all that was said, 
the legislation of the Diet might be overruled by 
the Duma or the Cabinet or the Tsar. Poles were 
included among the subjects of the Tsar, and ques- 
tions relating to them were to be settled at Petro- 
grad: no firontiers of the new independent state 
(which by these very provisions was completely 
dependent on Russia) were so much as indicated. 
Russia was preparing to hang herself in the rope 
that Germany gave her. But Germany was in 
no hurry, and gave Russia some more rope to 
ensure a longer drop. 



ATTEMPTED SOLUTIONS 18S 

It was worth waiting, for in October, 1916, Rus- 
sia had fixed on her neck the longer rope. This 
time a Nationalist member of the Duma, called 
Tchikatchov, propounded a scheme for Polish 
autonomy, which was published and submitted to 
the Russian Government. It suggested that — 

(i) The limits of Russia should be defined, 
lest Russia, * ^ sw^allowing Poland, should be 
poisoned by her.'' White Russia and Little 
Russia must be independent of Poland. 

(ii) A danger to be averted is the influence 
of Poles, whether German, Austrian or Jew- 
ish, on Russia. 

(iii) Russia must be ''at home" in Poland, 
and the Russian language must be used in 
public utterances. 

(iv) All official positions in Poland must 
be filled by Poles, but no official positions in 
Russia must be filled by them. 

(v) The Secretary of State for Poland must 
be a Russian. 

(vi) Cholm and Eastern Galicia must be 
excluded from Poland, and belong to Russia. 



184 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

Now is it possible to conceive a better mise-en- 
scene for a German declaration of independence 
for Poland than these amazing Russian utter- 
ances! Both received favourable consideration 
from the Russian Government, and between them 
(given that Russia in the event of her victory 
over Germany embodied them in a constitution 
for Poland) they left no shadow or semblance of 
independence at all. Poles might fill official posts 
in Poland, but they would no longer be able to 
occupy any position at all in Russia. Their seats 
in the Duma would be taken from them, and what- 
ever conclusions they came to as to the govern- 
ment of Poland (whatever '' Poland '' might prove 
to be when its frontiers were defined) would be re- 
ferred to the decision of the Duma, since Polea 
were still subjects of the Tsar, and Poles would 
no longer have seats in the Duma. The Secre- 
tary of State was to be a Russian, and in effect 
this scheme for the independence of Poland merely 
deprived the Poles of their seats in the Imperial 
Parliament. All decisions of the Polish Diet were 
to be referred to Petrograd, and instead of gain- 
ing liberties, they would but sacrifice any such lib- 
erties as they previously had. It is precisely as 
if Ireland were to lose her seats at Westminster 
and have a separate Parliament of her own, the 



ATTEMPTED SOLUTIONS 185 

legislation of which, before it took effect, would 
have to be referred to Westminster. Already, 
also, Cholm had been given back to the Poles by 
Austria; now this scheme confiscated it again. 
It is impossible to imagine a more signal triumph 
for German influence than this, for of all Rus- 
sians century of political imbecility with regard 
to Poland, here was the very flower and felicity. 

So Germany had not lost much by her year of 
waiting before she began to take any practical 
measures concerning the future constitution of 
Poland. She had on the contrary enabled Po- 
land to see with devastating clearness that even 
if the Russian armies (as seemed highly improba- 
ble) gained a smashing victory over Germany, the 
Poles must not expect anything from the con- 
queror. She had, too, by October, 1916, black- 
mailed Austria into abandonment, as an official 
programme, of the Austrian solution, and by this 
year of waiting she had caused to spring up in 
Poland many shades of feeling, which formed 
themselves into parties, negligible for the most 
part, and divided among themselves. With re- 
gard to them, she could reflect with cynical truth 
that there was ^^ safety in numbers. '^ But solid 
against her, and she knew it, was Polish national 
sentiment which underlay all the bickering little 



186 THE WHI^TE EAGLE OF POLAND 

parties into which Poland was split up. What 
would have satisfied all parties (and nothing else 
would have satisfied them all) would have been 
the creation of a real united and independent Po- 
land, at the idea of which Germany could laugh, 
not in her sleeve but quite openly. What prob- 
ably added resonance to her laughter was the 
public and official utterances of the notorious 
Protopopoff in Paris during this month, which 
certainly were humorous, considering the frank- 
ness with which the Russian Government had de- 
clared its intentions. He announced that ^^a great 
Poland will arise, which will unite all the Poles, 
Russian, German and Austrian. It will be a Po- 
land enjoying its own government, its own Parlia- 
ment and its own language. This must happen, 
because it is the wish of the whole of Russia." 
There was never a more irresponsible and futile 
utterance, and it deceived nobody. 

Simultaneously, in prompt contradiction, came 
a semi-official utterance from Russia, proclaiming 
that *^ never will the Russian people consent that 
a span of Russian earth should return to Poland, 
or an orthodox Russian submit to even a shadow 
of Polish authority. And Stiirmer, then Minister 
of the Interior, issued a regulation prohibiting the 
evacuated population of Poland, Lithuania and 



ATTEMPTED SOLUTIONS 18T 

the Baltic provinces from using Polish at public 
meetings. There could scarcely have been framed 
a completer comment on Russia's benevolent in- 
tentions, and on her sympathy with Poland, and 
with Poland's national aspirations. 

Germany could hardly do more than say 
^^Amen"; her prayer was answered, and Russia 
had hanged herself. And since no one else seemed 
inclined to proclaim the independence of Poland, 
she proceeded with infinite irony and the fervent 
consent of the All-Highest to do it herself. This 
proclamation was issued by the Central Empires 
on November 5th, 1916. 

All this year the famine in Poland had con- 
tinued and Germany had taken no steps to relieve 
it, for she hoped to encourage Polish emigration 
to smiling, welcoming Germany by its means. In 
the same way, when the citizens of Warsaw sent 
a petition to von Beseler that factories should be 
reopened, he replied that anybody could get work 
in Germany. At this time 47 per cent, of the 
population of Warsaw were dependent on relief. 



CHAPTER IV 

POLISH INDEPENDENCE (mADE IN GERMANY) 

In this proclamation of a Polish state made joint- 
ly at Warsaw in the name of the Central Empires 
there was a provision attached that the Poles 
should raise an army to defend it. Poland, being 
now ^^ protected ^^ and proclaimed a state by Ger- 
many, must be defended against Russia, the com- 
mon foe, and in consequence this defensive army 
would form part of the armies of the Central Em- 
pire. This was convenient, for Germany needed 
men, and since in the proclamation of the new 
State she gave nothing away with regard to the 
liberties or independence to be granted it, she 
hoped to raise fresh troops without loosing a lit- 
tle finger hold on Poland. She wanted troops 
against Russia, and hoped that Poland would 
furnish them. The idea was not devoid of cun- 
ning, but as so often happens with cunning ideas, 
it lacked perception, and was based on an uncom- 
prehending stupidity. 

The proclamation was followed up four days 

188 



INDEPENDENCE (MADE IN GERMANY) 189 

later by another joint proclamation bidding the 
citizens of the new State to enrol themselves in 
the army, and the Governor-Generals of Warsaw 
and Lublin, von Beseler and Kuk, as directors of 
recruiting, issued manifestos declaring that ^'In 
order to secure for the Polish army the position 
of belligerents, it will for the time being be in- 
cluded in the German Army/' But the citizens 
of the new state, instead of responding to the call, 
began to ask themselves whether they were en- 
listing in a National army or in a German Army, 
for the phrase ^'for the time being'' seemed to 
call for elucidation. If it was a National army 
for the defence of their new independent state 
there must be a government of that state, and a 
military department for the organization of the 
army. In fact, there were four demands which 
must be met before the new state could feel sure 
that it was asked to furnish recruits for a Na- 
tional army and not for a German army. These 
preliminary necessities were as follows : 

(i) A head of the new state, in whom shall 
be invested supreme authority, must be ap- 
pointed. 

(ii) The spheres of occupation of the Ger- 



190 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

man and Austrian control must be abolished 
before the State can come into existence. 

(iii) Some national Council of the State 
must be appointed to draft its constitution. 

(iv) There must be a Military department 
to organize the new Army. 

In a word (the logic of which is irrefutable) 
you cannot have an army to defend a state, be- 
fore that army has a state to defend. A state 
postulates by the very meaning of the word, a 
constitution and laws. Create the state, and after 
that it is time to think of creating an army to 
defend it. 

With regard to the proclamation of the state of 
Poland, out of all the parties and cliques that com- 
posed that state only two voices raised themselves 
in its favour. The first was that of the notoriously 
pro-German ^'Club of the Polish State,'' * a very 

* The Csas, the leading Cracow paper, remarks with regard to 
this Club, ''it ought to be remembered that the Club of the Polish 
State works with the idea of basing the existence of the Polish 
State on a connection with Germany, that it conducts an active 
propaganda in Warsaw in favour of that programme." It is 
equally strongly anti-Eussian, for in September, 1916, we find it 
passing a resolution that the Central Empires will permit certain 
measures which will allow the Poles "to take an active part in 
the struggle against Eussia. " 



INDEPENDENCE (MADE IN GERMANY) 191 

small group which sent, under the signature of its 
President, Studnicki, a very pleasant telegram to 
the Kaiser. Studnicki, it may be remarked, had 
been throughout a specimen of the rare pro-Ger- 
man Pole. Subsequently, in March, 1918, he pub- 
lished a manifesto in the Narod i Panstwo declar- 
ing that Poland must lean on Germany ^^for we 
can only consolidate our forces with the help of 
the German occupation.'' The following are ex- 
tracts from Studnicki 's telegram. 

*^ Great Monarch! On this day of joy for 
the Polish nation, when it learns it will be 
free, the hearts of freedom-loving Poles are 
full of gratitude for those who by their blood 
have liberated them. ... 

**The victories of Thine invincible arms 
have given (us) liberation from the Russian 
yoke of our two capitals, equally dear to the 
Polish heart. Warsaw and Vilna . . . 

^ ' We know that in all this is Thy will. High- 
est Lord, that the governing faith of those 
historic events is the strength of Thy 
spirit . 



>) 



Here, the inclusion of Vilna as a * ^ Polish capi- 
tal" is interesting. The Club of the Polish State 



192 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

foresaw a further benefit in store, which has not 
at present been permitted to materialize, namely, 
the union of Lithuania with Poland. There was 
a certain ground for this aspiration since at the 
capture of Vilna by the Germans, Pfeil, in com- 
mand of the German troops, proclaimed that he 
considered Vilna a Polish town. But the German 
government did not agree with him. 

The other note of congratulation was in the 
Cracow paper Czas, the organ of the pro-Austrian 
Conservative party. It sees the act of God 
(probably *^Gott") in the proclamation and adds, 

*^0n the spot from which the victorious 
sword has driven out Russia, the invader and 
oppressor, appears now, on the map of Eu- 
rope the inscription ' Poland \" 

Naturally the German press swelled into a per- 
fect chorus of Lobgesang, exclaiming that while 
the Entente vented high talk and Pecksniffian 
ejaculations about the rights and liberties of small 
nations to a national existence, magnanimous Ger- 
many alone had acted instead of talking, and had 
freed a down-trodden nation from the yoke of 
Russian oppression. 

But apart from these two instances a universal 



INDEPENDENCE (MADE IN GERMANY) 193 

chorus of discontent went up from every section 
of Polish politics. M. Roman Dmowski, leader 
of the National Democrats, and of the Polish party 
in the Duma, issued a manifesto on their behalf, 
calling attention to these points : — 

(i) The Polish Nation is one and indivisi- 
ble. Its aspirations can not be content with- 
out the reunion of partitioned territory. 

(ii) The proposed creation of a Polish state 
formed only of occupied territories of a sin- 
gle part of Poland merely confirms the parti- 
tion of the country. 

(iii) Without making definite pledges as to 
the rights and prerogatives of the kingdom, 
the Central Empires only emphasize its de- 
pendence on them. In return they require the 
Poles to furnish an army. 

(iv) This army is to be sent into battle to 
defend a cause which is not Poland's, and is 
subordinated to Germany and Austria. 

(v) The military projects of Germany and 
Austria are disastrous for Poland. 

A large meeting of peasants, usually an unor- 
ganized body of opinion, was held at Lodz, de- 



' 194 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

manding (i.) an immediate constitution for the 
state; (ii) the appointment of a King of ancient 
Polish lineage, who should be a Catholic, should 
speak Polish, and be the supreme commander of 
the Polish army, to be formed for the defence of 
the state. In the Duma, as was natural, the Po- 
lish Club, with Harusewicz as spokesman, de- 
nounced the German proclamation, saying that all 
true Poles repudiated it entirely. Though Ger- 
man propaganda announced enthusiasm over it 
among Poles in Paris, the Poles there, as a mat- 
ter of fact (largely National Democrats), passed 
a resolution condemning it. The Central Commit- 
tee of the Polish Socialist party did the same, 
making specific demands about the appointment 
of a Diet, with a view to summoning which a pro- 
visional Government must be appointed, com- 
posed of democratic elements. They were willing 
to defend Poland against Eussia, but Germans 
and Austrians could not call them to arms. Peas- 
ants in Lublin followed the example of Lodz, and 
presented a similar petition to Kuk, the Gover- 
nor-General, who found nothing better to say 
than that he saw with joy that the peasants took 
an interest in the building of the state. In the 
United States an enonnous demonstration was 
held, representing the four million Poles there. 



INDEPENDENCE (MADE IN GERMANY) 195 

declaring the proclamation to be a strategic move 
on the part of Germany, and protesting (i) against 
the formation of a Polish army to help Germany, 
(ii.) against a pretended Polish government which 
is merely an instrument in German hands, and 
(iii.) against a new partition of Poland. The 
Realist party, consisting of landowners, similarly 
rejected it, claiming an independent Poland 
(though in 1914 they had accepted autonomy under 
Russia) and declared that the proclamation of a 
belligerent cannot constitute a solution of the 
question. In Switzerland, the Poles expressed 
their sentiments about the proclamation by a 
manifesto of which the following is the key — ^*The 
^rights' of the independent Kingdom of Poland 
under German auspices seem to be the right to die 
for Germany.'' Even Lednicki, a supporter of 
the German solution, was a patriot on paper for 
a moment, and issued a manifesto that ^^ Poland 
proclaims her standpoint, unmindful of German 
bayonets." 

Without further multiplication of such views, 
which were accompanied by expressions of loss of 
confidence in the promises of the Entente powers, 
it is sufficient to say that never were so many 
different political parties in Poland united over 
any question as over their repudiation of the Ger- 



196 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

man proclamation of the State and the consequent 
(November 9th) attempt to raise a Polish army 
to fight German battles. This attempt may be 
dismissed very shortly with the statement that 
instead of the army of 700,000 or 800,000 men 
whom Germany hoped to recruit, she succeeded, 
during the next two months in enlisting 1,800 men, 
of whom 1,200 proved to be physically unfit, from 
the effect of a year's starvation. Six hundred, 
in fact, were all the efficient support that she was 
able to raise. Even the Czas, which had shown 
some enthusiasm over the proclamation of the 
Polish State could not support the idea of an army 
raised for the defence of the State, before the 
State had any existence, and said ''There can be 
no army without a Government. Some way must 
be found whereby the Polish nation can initiate 
and direct the formation of a Polish army.'' 
Even in highly-censored Germany, the true nullity 
of this declaration of Independence, was recog- 
nized, and we find Herr Max Weber neatly sum- 
marizing it in the Frankfurter Zeitung of Febru- 
ary 25th, 1917. He says ''(the Central Empires) 
issued an unactionable promissory note with no 
definite contents in favour of a beneficiary who had 
not yet attained a corporate existence." 

The almost unanimous reception accorded to 



INDEPENDENCE (MADE IN GERMANY) 197 

these two schemes made it clear to the German 
authorities that some sort of Polish government 
must come into existence, and four days later an 
order was issued for the establishment of a gov- 
ernment which was neither more nor less than a 
swindle. Unfortunately, it was an obvious 
swindle. The Government was to take the form 
of a Diet and a Council of State, and the provi- 
sions were as follows : — 

(i.) The Diet is to consist of seventy mem- 
bers belonging to the German sphere of oc- 
cupation, and to be appointed by the Town 
Councils of Warsaw and Lodz. 

(ii.) This Diet will appoint eight members 
of the Council of State, and four more will 
be nominated by the Governor-General of 
Warsaw, who will also appoint its Chairman. 

(iii.) The language to be used both in Diet 
and Council is to be Polish. 

Now, so far there seems to be a certain ^*Po- 
lishness" about the new Government, which van- 
ishes cleanly and completely when we consider 
the proposed functions of the Diet and of the 
Council of State, for — 



198 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

(iv.) The Council of State is to discuss 
matters submitted to it by the Governor-Gen- 
eral, and to ''possess an initiative in legisla- 
tion." 

(v.) The Diet is to discuss matters submit- 
ted to it by the Governor-General, and have 
powers of taxation. 

The Governor-General, in fact, provides sub- 
jects of discussion for the two bodies, but is under 
no obligation to accept their conclusions. One of 
these bodies, the Council of State may ''initiate 
legislation,'' a phrase utterly meaningless, since 
no provision is made for the completion of such 
legislation. In other words, neither body has any 
powers at all, and their only functions are to con- 
verse on subjects indicated to them by the Gov- 
ernor-General. 

This led to a protest from the Poles, who in- 
dependently formed a Provisional National Coun- 
cil in Warsaw, consisting (according to the orig- 
inal scheme) of 81 members, of whom Warsaw 
contributed 41. They ignored the Diet and Coun- 
cil of State as set up by the Germans, and de- 
manded that. 

(i.) The Council of State shall be formed 



INDEPENDENCE (MADE IN GERMANY) 199 

on an understanding with parties in the Na- 
tional Council. 

(ii.) The Council of State shall have legis- 
lative power and a voice in military affairs. 

(iii.) A Regent from a friendly Roman 
Catholic dynasty shall be appointed. 

(iv.) The Council of State shall consist of 
20 members, 12 from the German territory of 
occupation and .8 from the Austrian. Of 
these only one shall be appointed by the Gov- 
ernor-General. 

These proposals, put forth by the Polish self- 
appointed National Council in two successive de- 
mands, were admitted, and in this fact we can 
find a certain significance. Germany had to recog- 
nize the National Council, and thus the Poles got 
a certain real voice in the making of the Constitu- 
tion which they did not enjoy under the original 
German scheme. Probably also pressure was put 
on her ally by Austria, the official press of which 
country had entirely ignored the first declaration, 
since it implied the total abandonment of the 
^ ' Austrian Solution, ' ' and the only announcements 
given of it in the unofficial press were derived from 
Berlin. 



SOO THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

» > 

Thereupon, with a slight modification of num- 
bers, the Provisional Council of State, to which 
National Democrats, Eealists, and Social Demo- 
crats refused to belong, came into existence. It 
consisted of 25 instead of 20 members, 10 for the 
sphere of Austrian occupation, and 15 for the Ger- 
man. Its functions, however, were prescribed by 
the occupying powers, and were to all intents and 
purposes as barren as according to the first Ger- 
man promulgation, running as follows : 

(i.) The Council is to be summoned by the 
two Emperors. When a vacancy occurs it 
shall be filled up by them, on the order of the 
Governors-General. 

(ii.) Both Governors-General are at liberty 
to send representatives to the Council to get 
opinions or to give explanations. They are 
allowed to speak whenever they desire. 

(iii.) Eepresentatives of the Empires are 
to speak in German: Poles in Polish. 

(iv.) The Council is to make proposals 
about the administration. 

(v.) It is to co-operate with the Allied pow- 
ers in the formation of an army. 



INDEPENDENCE (MADE IN GERMANY) 201 

In other words, the Council was only to meet 
when summoned by the two Emperors, either of 
whom apparently had the power of proroguing it 
sine die. When it was summoned, the only powers 
it possessed were those of discussion, and there- 
fore as far as constitutional functions go, it might 
just as well not meet at all. 

As far as I have been able to ascertain, there 
were, apart from the supporters of the National 
Democrats, who refused to sit in the Council of 
State altogether, some eighteen or nineteen par- 
ties, most of whom consisted of a mere handful of 
men, and in consequence the wranglings over the 
appointment of the Council of State were likely 
to prove interminable. General von Beseler, after 
urging conciliation and speed, without success, 
finally (in January, 1917) issued an ultimatum 
that the Council of State must be complete in 24 
hours, and apparently it was. In this Council the 
National Democrats, the Eealists, and the So- 
cial Democrats refused to take part, though Pil- 
sudski, who had raised the Polish legions (of 
whom presently) said he would not enter the 
Council without them. Since Germany's own ap- 
peal for raising recruits had proved such a com- 
plete fiasco, she knew that the only man who could 
possibly obtain recruits for them was this very 



J202 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

remarkable person. He had great influence with 
the younger generation and among the working- 
class, and represented the class of Polish patriot- 
ism that was directed against Russia. For these 
reasons, the Germans considered him essential to 
their plans, and eventually they succeeded in get- 
ting him, without the inclusion in the Council of 
State of the party for which he had bargained, 
since the National Democrats absolutely refused 
to enter it without such rearrangements of seats 
as would give them and their affiliated groups a 
predominant vote. Finally also the Jewish ele- 
ment was included in this futile Council, which 
strengthened the sadly deficient pro-German sym- 
pathies of it. 

The Council of State opened; von Beseler and 
Kuk, the Governors of Warsaw and Lublin first 
spoke, and their joint speech from the throne was 
replied to by the chairman, Niemojewski, hitherto 
unknown as a politician. After that no progress 
of any sort was made, and we learn from Die Post 
of January 6th, that the principal Polish parties 
will not co-operate, and this is followed by a la- 
ment that in spite of Germany's exertions on be- 
half of Poland, Poland will not be her friend. The 
truth was that the Poles knew very well that this 
Council of State created by Germany was a sham. 



INDEPENDENCE (MADE IN GERMANY) 20S 

constructed and opened merely with the pretence 
of granting the Constitution which Poland de- 
manded as an essential first step that must be 
taken before the raising of a national army, which 
the Poles declared must be an army for the de- 
fence of the state, but which Germany designed 
to fight her own battles. Poland, as a whole, 
wanted independence and self-government, what 
it found it had got was a constitution without 
power, and the privilege of dying for Germany. 
This was openly asserted by Pilsudski, to whom 
Germany looked to raise the army, and he an- 
nounced in the Council that Germany had created 
the Polish State in order to raise a Polish army 
for herself. 

A semi-official admonishment to the Poles that 
supplies a significant comment on opinion in Ger- 
many appeared in the Kolnische Zeitung of Janu- 
ary 15th, 1917. It remarks that though it is only 
two months since Poland was liberated, doubts as 
to the success of this have arisen in Germany. It 
is necessary for German frontiers to be secured 
against Russia, on conclusion of peace, but she 
cannot simply annex Poland. Independent Po- 
land has therefore been created, but the main con- 
dition for its success is that it should have a close 
connection with Germany and her Allies, and its 



W4< THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

army with the armies of the Quadruple Alliance. 
The danger lies in the existence of Polish Na- 
tionalism which is bound to arouse the spirit of 
irredentism. The acquisition of German Poland 
and access to the sea are naturally part of the 
Polish ideal, but since Germany can never enter- 
tain such an idea these aspirations must be given 
up once and for all. As long as the war lasts, 
Poland must be content to be in German occupa- 
tion. Poland can only prosper under German and 
Austrian protection, and the Poles must see to it 
that they use their rights in a way corresponding 
to German interests, for both Germans and Poles 
know that it was not sheer humanitarianism that 
called the new state into life, but the considera- 
tion of important political interests. The right 
thing for the Poles to do is to give up, once for 
all, their irredentist claims on Prussian territory^ 
and stake their lives on a victory of German arms. 

Similar exhortations appeared in the Frank- 
furter Zeitung and the Rheinisch Westfdlische 
Zeitung, urging the necessity of holding Poland 
firmly in German Grip and strengthening the in- 
terests of German Kultur. 

Now this extract sums up the exact impasse be- 
tween the ''independent'^ state and its German 
rulers. Germany insists that the whole well-being 



INDEPENDENCE (MADE IN GERMANY) 205 

of Poland depends on its German orientation — no 
mention of Austria occurs at all — and that to 
stand well with Germany it must prove its devo- 
tion by the shedding of its blood in the cause of 
Germany.* It has to take Germany on trust, blind, 
identify itself with German aims, give up all its 
aspirations, and revel in its independence! For 
its own peace of mind it had better dismiss once 
and for all any idea of becoming a united Poland, 
if by unity is meant a "German solution'^ imply- 
ing the joining to it of Posen, in the same way 
as under an "Austrian solution/' Galicia would 
have been united to it. But as a counter-attrac- 
tion to this unrealizable programme we find the 
Council of State permitted to issue a manifesto 
declaring that one of its chief tasks is to "extend 
the independent state-existence to all the terri- 
tories taken away from Russia, and gravitating 
towards Poland." In other words, if Germany 
was determined not to give back any part of Prus- 
sian Poland, she might be induced to promise that 
some of the Russian territories once belonging to 

* About this time the National Democrats issued the following 
proclamation about enlistment in German armies: — "Poles, 
brothers, you are being forced to enlist. If you do not wish to 
draw down on your heads the curse of an entire nation, if you 
wish to preserve the spotless purity of your emblem, the White 
Eagle, do not play the part of German conspirators. ' ' 



W6 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

Poland should be reunited to lier. This change 
of subject suited Germany very well; by all means 
let the Council of State amuse itself by dreams of 
enlarging Poland at the expense of Eussia. That 
would make bad blood between Poles and Rus- 
sians, and, according to the German formula, the 
more bad blood between other countries the better. 
Professor Romer, the Cracow geographer, joined 
in the chorus against Russia, conducted hj Ger- 
many, and produced figures to disprove Russian 
statistics which gave the Polish population of 
Lithuania as 1,000,000, whereas he claimed 5,000,- 
000 as inhabitants of it. It is more than possible 
that the Russian estimate is below the mark, but 
when we find that Gustav Olechowski, himself a 
Polish Nationalist, only claims 1,500,000 Poles as 
inhabiting Lithuania, we must conclude that the 
Russian estimate is nearer the mark than Profes- 
sor Romer 's. He seems to have arrived at his cal- 
culation by including as Poles all Roman Catholics 
on the ground of a common religion. The assump- 
tion is picturesque, but has nothing to do with 
fact. Similarly the Polish right to annex Volhynia 
was put forward on the ground that owing to the 
emigration of Russians eastwards, the population 
now was mainly Polish. 

These claims and others like them on Russian 



INDEPENDENCE (MADE IN GERMANY) 207 

provinces called forth a protest from the Govern- 
ment at Petrograd and the most violent counter- 
blast from the Lithunian Nationalists, who de- 
clared that the Poles were their worst enemies. It 
is probable that Germany instigated those Imper- 
ialist demands, with the object not only of fo- 
menting ill-feeling between Russia and Poland, in 
which it perfectly succeeded, but of giving the Na- 
tional Council something to occupy it, so as to dis- 
tract it from its real business of drafting the Con- 
stitution. This succeeded also, and up till March, 
1917, the Council, apart from starting schools for 
officers, seems to have accomplished nothing ex- 
cept to settle what the official seal of the new state 
was to be, and to approve of the establishment of 
a Committee of National Contribution, the first 
aim of which was to raise money for the Polish 
army. 

The parties for complete Polish independence, 
with the union of territories now belonging to Rus- 
sia, Austria and Germany, though they were quite 
incapable of getting independence, grew in num- 
bers and weight during this period. The cynical 
farce of Polish government, the recruiting of Poles 
for industrial work in Germany, and their forcible 
detention there, the measures introduced by Ger- 
many for compulsory work for Poles in Posen, the 



208 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

census ordered by Germany for all men in the oc- 
cupied territories between the ages of 17 and 50, 
which the Poles construed into a foreshadowing of 
conscription, the continued refused of Germany 
to appoint a Regent, were rapidly bringing re- 
sentment to a head, and Germany, who had been 
so successful in inspiring Polish distrust of Rus- 
sia, was diverting the main flow of suspicion 
against herself. 

Then in March the Russian revolution broke 
out, and on the 29th of that month the revolu- 
tionary Russian Government definitely proclaimed 
the independence of Poland (which was a very dif- 
ferent thing from the meaningless phrases of the 
Grand Duke's proclamation) and asked in return 
for a '^free military union'' with the country to 
which it promised liberty. In other words, Rus- 
sia like Austria and Germany made a bid for the 
support of a Polish army. To this reiterated 
promise of independence the Council of State sent 
a cool reply, congratulating Russia on the liberty 
that she, too, had regained, but reminding her that 
the Central Empires had also promised Poland 
independence. But on the population generally 
the effect of this Russian proclamation was wildly 
exciting: Russia, democratic and free, stretched 
out an equal and fraternal hand, and they vented 



INDEPENDENCE (MADE IN GERMANY) S09 

their enthusiasm in strikes and anti-German dis- 
turbances. The Council of State, however, had 
taken a truer view of the value of the Russian 
declaration, for the nature of the ^'free military 
union" was soon hinted at by the new Russian 
Government, who elegantly alluded to the fact that 
there were a very large number of Polish refugees 
in Russia (there were probably upwards of 1,000,- 
000 of them, of whom 500,000 were between the 
ages of 17 and 45.* Most of these, up to the age 
of 37 at any rate, had already enlisted in the Rus- 
sian armies, and what was aimed at by the ^^free 
military union" referred to the time after the 
war, when Russia hoped, in spite of the indepen- 
dence of Poland, to retain a considerable number 
of Poles in her military forces. 

The disenchantment spread, and before long it 
was felt that this declaration of independence 
would probably prove as nugatory as previous 
Russian declarations. But, in any case, Russia 
now, in chaos herself, had abandoned all claim to 
any suzerainty over Poland, and perhaps the 
most important result of the proclamation was 
that at this precise moment the National Demo- 

* This large percentage was due to the fact that it was chiefly 
able-bodied men who fled into Eussia at the time of the retreat 
of her armies in 1915. 



SIO THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

cratic party, who had previously accepted the 
Grand Duke Nicholas's proclamation, which im- 
plied the restoration of German and Austrian Po- 
land to a kingdom, independent, but under Rus- 
sian suzerainty, expanded their aspirations and 
claimed for the future Kingdom of Poland much 
of the territory originally belonging to Poland 
which had passed to Russia in consequence of the 
partitions. 

To quiet the growing disgust with Germany, 
von Beseler made a journey to Berlin, and re- 
turned with the German Government's consent 
that a Regent should be established, hut (this 
**buf was a familiar feature in German indul- 
gences) they had not yet arrived at agreement 
^^with regard to the person of the Regent.'' This, 
of course, again postponed the appointment of a 
Regent sine die, and rendered meaningless the fur- 
ther promise that the Germans were resolved to 
leave Warsaw as soon as the Regency had been es- 
tablished in such a way that the zones of German 
and Austrian occupation came under his author- 
ity. In other words, though they were resolved to 
appoint a Regent and thereupon leave Warsaw, 
they intended to remain in possession because (in 
spite of their resolve) they could not settle on a 
Regent. Austria had designated a Habsburg Re- 



INDEPENDENCE (MADE IN GERMANY) 211 

gent, and Germany a Hohenzollern : the appoint- 
ment of either would remove Poland too far away 
from the ''sphere^' of the other power, and there- 
fore Poland must wait. But this message from 
Berlin, delivered by von Beseler, is of interest, 
because it shows that there was still some sort of 
vitality in the policy of the ''Austrian solution," 
or, if not vitality, the force of inert resistance. If 
it could not create, it could veto. Next month 
(June, 1917), after a further ineffectual protest 
from the Council of State and a threat of resigna- 
tion, the German and Austrian Governments both 
reaffirmed their desire to appoint a Regent. 
Neither could do it without the consent of the 
other, and it served the purposes of both to give 
no effective government to Poland. They agreed, 
in fact, to differ, since their differing effected the 
point on which they were perfectly agreed. For 
the same reason the joint resolution of the Polish 
Deputies in the Reichsrat and of the Diet of Gah- 
cia for Polish unification with access to the sea 
was the mere tap of a ripple against a stone 
breakwater. Austria would certainly have 
granted that at the expense of Germany, but 
could refer to Germany even as Mr. Spenlow re- 
ferred to the obduracy of his partner Jorkins. 
The Central Empires, though they might disagree 



212 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

with each other, were unanimous in disregarding 
any obligation they had entered into with regard 
to Poland. Austria would not give way to Ger- 
many, nor Germany to Austria, and as far as 
Poland was concerned, this disagreement post- 
poned any solution of the political impasse.. All 
the time famine was raging in Russian Poland, 
and also in Lithuania, where the mortality among 
children was terrible. Yet still parcels of food 
could be sent to Germany by occupying troops, 
without deducting from the food-rations of the 
recipients, and still Germany refused to guaran- 
tee — whatever her guarantee might be worth — 
that foreign relief for the starving Poles should 
be used for them and not for exportation into 
Germany. 

Trouble was brewing: again in June, 1917, the 
Council of State passed a resolution that Lithu- 
ania should be reunited to Poland, and this was 
supported by the Inter-Party Club of Warsaw * 
under the leadership of the National Democrats, 
in conjunction with Realists, Polish Progressives, 
Christian Democrats, the National Federation and 
the Union of Economic Independence, for Ger- 
many, by her obstinate refusal to give substance 

* The Inter-party Club represents pro-Entente opinion in Poland. 



INDEPENDENCE (MADE IN GERMANY) 213 

to any of her promises, had done nothing more 
than consolidate Polish parties together against 
herself. Support was given to the Polish cause by 
a further declaration of the Allies, for at a meet- 
ing of the Polish National Club in Petrograd, M. 
Albert Thomas announced in the name of the 
French Government that they desired *^ unifica- 
tion independence, strength and greatness of Po- 
land, for the Polish question is a European and 
an international question." This was in flat con- 
tradiction of the declaration of the late Tsar's 
Government that the Polish question was an in- 
ternal Russian question, and was a direct allusion 
to the importance of Poland as a check to the Mit- 
tel-Europa policy of Germany. Neither Russia 
nor the Central Empires had given substance to 
the promises they had made, and it was clear that 
if Polish national aspirations were to be satisfied, 
it must be the Entente to whom Poland had to 
look. This revulsion of feeling against the oc- 
cupying powers led to fresh disturbances that 
broke ou,t in Warsaw, and to the refusal of the 
large majority, 85 per cent., of the Polish legions 
to take any oath of allegiance to the Central Pow- 
ers. On that the mailed fist descended: the Po- 
lish soldiers who had refused to take the oath were 
sent to internment camps, and Pilsudski, who had 



2U THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

been the one hope on whom rested the raising of 
a Polish army to fight for Germany, was arrested 
on the charge of conspiracy and imprisoned, upon 
which the commanders of the Polish legions re- 
signed. Cannons were placed in the streets of 
Warsaw, thousands of civilians were arrested, 
and the Governor-General announced that he had 
authority to burn Warsaw to the ground, in order 
to show how deeply Germany had at heart the wel- 
fare of Poland. 

But public opinion in Germany by no means 
endorsed measures of this kind, which were as 
unwise as they were tyrannical, and among other 
papers the Kolnische Volkszeitung deplored Ger- 
man maladministration which had made an enemy 
of the entire country. The state had been formed 
too late, no king had been appointed, and it was 
governed by German Jacks-in-office, who could not 
speak a word of Polish or French. The fact that 
this was allowed to pass the Censor is an indica- 
tion of the general disgust in Germany of the 
military autocracy as applied to a country which 
had been promised independence. More than six 
months had passed since that declaration had been 
made, and there had as yet been no indication 
that it was endorsed by the faintest sincerity of 
purpose. According to her usual policy, Germany 



INDEPENDENCE (MADE IN GERMANY) 215 

had tried to ingratiate herself with the Poles by 
fomenting their hatred of Russia, bnt now that 
tide of suspicion and distrust which she had suc- 
cessfully caused to flow was ebbing strongly back 
upon herself. Her fair promises had been shown 
to be shams, and even when she replaced cajolery 
with tyranny, she was haunted by the sense of im- 
perfect mastery. She had tried to raise an army 
of volunteers to fight her battles, and had suc- 
ceeded in getting together but 600 men, and when 
she made a demand for the forcible recruiting of 
Poles for the w^ork of munitions and industrial 
concerns in Germany, the municipality of Warsaw 
flatly refused to organise any such scheme, and 
she had been obliged to fall back on a voluntary 
appeal instead. This proved to be almost as great 
a fiasco as her attempt to raise troops, and only 
2,629 volunteers came forward. Neither by con- 
ciliation nor compulsion had she attained her aims, 
and now, when she had been in occupation for two 
years, she had not succeeded in making the Poles 
either her slaves or her friends. They would 
not willingly fight for her or work for her, and 
she had failed to compel them. She had not solved 
the Polish problem, and she was perfectly well 
aware of that humiliating fact. She had satis- 
fied neither herself nor her recalcitrant depen^ 
dents. 



CHAPTER V 

(i) THE POLISH LEGIOXS 

Of the various factors with had produced this 
crisis by far the most important from the Ger- 
man standpoint was the utter failure to induce 
Poland to furnish Germany with an army. The 
German authorities had tried to raise it them- 
selves and had succeeded in enlisting 600 fit men, 
when they had hoped to raise between 700,000 and 
800,000. But they believed that one man was 
able to raise this army for them, and this was 
Pilsudski, whom they had now imprisoned, de- 
spairing of success, on the charge of conspiracy. 
He had not conspired at all: he had but consist- 
ently refused to conspire or to exercise the huge 
moral force which he had in Poland, in the mat- 
ter of raising an army, unless (as we have seen) 
that army was intended to be the defence and 
shield of a Polish independent State, which the 
German authorities, up till the present time had 
refused to call into existence, or to grant it a 
Constitution that was anything more than a swin- 

216 



THE POLISH LEGIONS 217 

die. A very brief resume of the history of this 
remarkable patriot, and of the legions which he 
had created will help the reader to understand 
how great was the prestige with which the Ger- 
mans rightly credited him, and how significant to 
them were the Polish legions which he had raised 
at the beginning of the war. 

Pilsudski was a Lithuanian Pole, and his father, 
like himself, was a sturdy Polish patriot. As a 
student in Petrograd he joined the Socialistic 
movement, and was deported to Siberia. He came 
back, having escaped from there, in the early 
nineties, and leaving Eussia, became a founder of 
the Polish Socialist Party, the first that included 
the struggle for Polish independence in its pro- 
gramme. He spent some years as an emigrant in 
London, where he published the organ of the Po- 
lish Socialist Party. In 1904 he went to Japan, 
and, unsuccessfully tried to get the assistance of 
the Japanese Government in organizing an armed 
rising in Poland against Russia. He returned 
from there to Russian Poland, where he was the 
leader of a revolutionary^ movement, was again 
arrested and imprisoned at St. Petersburg. Once 
more he escaped, and settled in Galicia. After the 
annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1909, 
when Austria was preparing for war against Rus- 



218 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

sia, he came into contact with the Austrian staff 
and offered to raise a volunteer legion on their 
behalf. He began to organize this in 1911, three 
years before the outbreak of the present war. It 
consisted mainly of Socialistic emigrants from 
Russian Poland, many of whom were trained as 
officers with the help of the Austrian military au- 
thorities. When the war broke out, the legion was 
put on an official basis. Pilsudski was appointed 
to its command, and both his staff and the rank 
and file were Polish Socialists, largely young men 
studying in Galicia, who had come under the in- 
fluence of Pilsudski 's propaganda, but a consider- 
able number of Austrians joined it also. 

As a military leader Pilsudski shewed marked 
ability; politically, his inspiration was his whole- 
hearted hatred of the old Russian regime of Tsar- 
ism, and thus owing both to his qualities and their 
defects he could not analyse the peculiar diffi- 
culties of the Polish question generally, or see 
that Germany was just as strong an opponent of 
Polish liberty as Russia, and infinitely the more 
insidious. To this patriotic Pole living in terri- 
tory grabbed by Russia from the ancient Republic, 
Russia was the obvious enemy. He had no sym- 
pathies for any powers either on the side of the 
Central Empires or on that of the Entente: his 



THE POLISH LEGIONS 219 

only motive was to tight the enemies of Poland. 
Poland was encircled by foes, and it really mat- 
tered little to Pilsudski what segment of that cir- 
cle he originally '^went for,'' provided only that 
he hurled himself, like a wild cat, at something 
hostile. He appears to have made up his mind, 
years before the war, that Russia, anyhow, was 
a foe to his fatherland, and he rated the proclama- 
tion of the Grand Duke Nicholas at precisely its 
proper value. Indeed it might have been of him, 
as the incarnation of the Polish national spirit, 
that a Russian, Professor Bierdiayew, said : ^' The 
Poles do not want Russian sympathy and friend- 
ship, but their own independence. . . . The Po- 
lish question is not and cannot be a Russian prob- 
lem for them : it is a matter of their own, and at 
the same time a matter that should concern the 
whole world. . . . It is more than obvious that 
for a Pole the future arrangements for Poland 
cannot be part of the future arrangements of Rus- 
sia or Germany or Austria. For them there is 
no Russian or Austrian orientation. They do 
not want their freedom as a reward from any- 
body . . . Poland is not in decadence; it is at 
the height of its vitality and strength. . . . Poles 
have no Russian or Austrian orientation, only a 
Polish one. ..." 



220 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

Pilsudski was always ready to take the ^'best 
chance'' for the independence of Poland (as when 
in 1904 he went to Japan and offered on behalf 
of the Socialists to organize an armed rising in 
Poland against Russia) and thus^ since Russia 
at the outbreak of war was the wrongful holder 
of Lithuania and Poland, he raised the legions to 
fight against the most conspicuous opponent of 
Polish independence. Whatever Power, be it Rus- 
sian or German, was in possession of Poland, that 
Power was Pilsudski 's enemy, and he always 
^'went for'' his enemy. This undeviating pur- 
pose invariably dictated his course. 

As such he was the first to lead troops into 
Russian territory, and at the opening of the war 
made a skirmishing advance out of Galicia into 
Russia on the side of the Austrians. He was 
recalled, as leading an "irregular body," and in 
order to regularise that irregular body, the Aus- 
trian command found it somehow reasonable to 
embody him and his legions in their regular army. 
There they remained till December, 1915, par- 
taking in the Austrian retreat and, subsequently, 
in its advance. By this time the Germans had 
taken possession — though largely with Austrian 
troops — of the territory of the Kingdom of Po- 
land, and had seen the potentiality of Pilsudski 



THE POLISH LEGIONS 221 

in the way of raising a Polish army, consisting 
not merely of the legions, who were a body of a 
very few thousand men, but of a Polish force, con- 
sisting, so they hoped, not of a few thousand 
men, but of at least 700,000, to fight in the in- 
terests not of Austria nor of Poland, but of Ger- 
many. With this in view Germany managed, 
without detaching the Polish legions from the 
Austrian army, to include them in the general ad- 
vance to the Stokhod front in December, 1915. 
There they served till the late summer of 1916, 
when Pilsudski, after constant friction with Bern- 
hardi, who was the German commander of that 
section, suddenly refused to serve there any more, 
and, by flat mutiny, withdrew on August 28th a 
number of his troops from the front and marched 
them back to Warsaw. That there had been fric- 
tion between him and Bernhardi there was no 
doubt, but the reason for his withdrawal of him- 
self and his division was a much more honourable 
and consistent motive: it was in fact his invari- 
able purpose of fighting the most obvious of Po- 
land's foes that dictated it. For a year now, 
Germany, and in a minor degree Austria, had 
been in possession of Poland, and had altogether 
shelved the question of Polish independence. It 
was for that alone that Pilsudski cared, and his 



S22 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

mutiny was without doubt due to political mo- 
tives. At any cost he wanted Polish independence, 
and he transgressed every code of military dis- 
cipline in order to provoke a political crisis. Just 
as, when the Russians were in possession of Po- 
land, he fought against the Russians : so now, 
when the Germans were in possession, he refused 
to fight against the Russians. But in each case 
his motive was perfectly clear : he would not sup- 
port an enemy of Poland, and his action, doubt- 
less, contributed to induce Germany to declare 
the independence of Poland. 

It says volumes for the value which the Ger- 
mans attached to him and his influence that he 
was not instantly shot for this mutiny. But they 
knew perfectly well that if any one could raise a 
Polish army for them it was Pilsudski, and in- 
stead of shooting him, both of the Central Em- 
pires tried to make friends with him. In Sep- 
tember, 1916, just after his mutiny and retire- 
ment with his troops, it was announced from 
Vienna (Wiener Korrespondenz Bureau) that the 
Polish legions were going to be transformed into 
a Polish Auxiliary Corps. So far from being- 
shot as mutinous they were recognised as the 
cadres of a Polish army, to guard the State which 
the Central Empires were proposing to create. 



THE POLISH LEGIONS 



Instead of having tlieir badges torn off them and 
being laid in nameless graves they v/ere given 
a Polish uniform with the ancient Polish badge 
of the White Eagle. ''They will depend/' so 
ran the official proclamation, ''in matters of tac- 
tics on the High Command of the armies of the 
Central Empires, but they will be independent as 
regards their own organisation, and they will tight 
in conjunction with the Austro-Hungarian army. ' ' 
But until the success of this diplomacy was as- 
sured the Central Empires thought it wiser that 
Pilsudski should be in retirement, and for the 
next month "for the sake of his health" he was 
inaccessible at Zeleopane, under the guise of a 
rest cure. That was all the punishment inflicted 
on him for the rankest mutiny, and while he was 
" resting' ' the Polish legions in October, 1916, 
passed a resolution to do their duty on behalf 
of an independent Poland and to stand hy Pilsud- 
sM, In fact, the nucleus for a Polish army re- 
fused to help the Central Empires in any way 
until they , had got their Pilsudski again. Next 
month, accordingly (November, 1916) he was 
rested and reappeared. His mutiny had been 
completely successful: he had forced the Central 
Empires to promise to let him form an army of 
the Polish State. But at that point there broke 



224 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

across the common path an unbridgeable chasm, 
for the Germans wanted a Polish army to help 
Germany, and Pilsudski never contemplated such 
a thing. If he was to raise a Polish army, that 
army would be raised for Poland and Poland 
alone. 

On the eve (literally the eve) of the German 
and Austrian declaration of the ^' State of Po- 
land,'' Pilsudski declared in favour of the break- 
ing up of the Polish legions, and of the using of 
them as cadres for the formation of a Polish 
army. He professed himself able to raise an army 
of 700,000 men, but this would depend on the na- 
ture of the imminent declaration of independence. 
Here again, now that Germany and Austria were 
in possession of Poland, he was *^up against'' the 
occupying Powers, for they on their side declared 
that Poland must prove herself worthy of inde- 
pendence, by shedding her blood on behalf of Ger- 
many. The legions by the mouth of Pilsudski 
refused to do anything of the kind. But still Pil- 
sudski was neither interned nor arrested nor shot. 
The Central Elmpires considered him as their most 
valuable asset as a recruiter, if they could only 
get him to see ^^eye to eye" with them. 

They continued to work at their impracticable 
project, and in December, 1916, declared Pilsud- 



THE POLISH LEGIONS 225 

ski as the organiser of the new army, in conjunc- 
tion with Sikorski, a Polish Colonel who was much 
more amenable to sweet German influence than his 
coadjutor. A great inauguration ceremony for 
the new army was arranged, and on its being 
handed over at Warsaw in April, 1917, to the Gov- 
ernor, General von Beseler as cadres for the new 
Polish army, von Beseler addressed the troops in 
the most gratifying terms. He said : — 

*^ Comrades! I greet you most heartily in 
the capital of your fatherland, in whose lib- 
eration your bravery has assisted. . . . Cer- 
tainly a Polish army will soon arise from 
your brave ranks, and this army will defend 
and guard your country. We are glad that 
we (sic) are able to fight still further shoul- 
der to shoulder with you. A free Kingdom 
of Poland! Hurrah!" 

Now these were very ^^ handsome expressions'* 
considering that the last act of the Polish le- 
gions was to march away without permission from 
the front at Stokhod, and again this emphasises 
the enormous importance that Germany attached 
to the power of Pilsudski. After this warm wel- 
come the ill-starred von Beseler drew up a * ^ Flag- 



226 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

oath^' for the legions and attempted to admin- 
ister it. By the proposed flag-oath, the Polish 
soldiers had to swear allegiance, on the Polish 
colours, to the German Kaiser, their commander- 
in-chief, and to the Monarchs of the two Central 
powers as guarantors of the independent Polish 
state. This is interesting, as it shows that the 
German orientation had for the present extin- 
guished the Austrian, but from the point of view 
of the Central Empires it was uninteresting, since 
Pilsudski and his legions refused by an enor- 
mous majority to take any such oath. They were 
not prepared to promise anything of the sort. 

It must be borne in mind, that when the Polish 
legions were taken over to form the nucleus for 
an army, they were absolutely unimportant in 
point of actual numbers. They consisted at this 
time of three full brigades, i. e. six regiments of 
infantry, with nine batteries of 8 cm. quick-firing 
guns, one regiment of cavalry, and complete equip- 
ment of wireless, ambulance, doctors, etc. But 
Germany, quite correctly, saw in them the poten- 
tiality of a much larger force. If they, and in 
especial if their creater Pilsudski, could be 
brought to see themselves *'as others saw them,'' 
Germany would get her projected army of 700,000 
to 800,000 men fighting for her. But again the in- 



THE POLISH LEGIONS 2S7 

superable difficulty was Pilsudski: he had de- 
clared himself capable of raising, and without 
doubt could have raised such a force, hut (here 
was the German ^^buf turned against its origina- 
tors) there had first to exist a Polish independent 
state on whose behalf this army was to be raised. 
Given a satisfactory solution of the Polish ques- 
tion, in other words the creation of a real and 
independent Poland, Pilsudski would and could 
have equipped it with a suitable army, for de- 
fensive and perhaps offensive purposes of its 
own. But he was not going to raise, nor were his 
countrymen going to form part of an army to be 
used by Germany for her own ends. Then in 
March, 1917, came the Russian revolution, and 
to Pilsudski ^s frank and filibustering mind, the 
new Bussia, since it too was revolutionary and the 
foe of tyrants, became his spiritual brother, and 
when the offer was made him to command the 
Polish army in Russia he did not refuse it, though 
I cannot find that he accepted it. Upon which, 
the German authorities, at last despairing of get- 
ting him to throw himself into German schemes 
arrested him for conspiracy. His last public dec- 
laration was that Germany had created a Polish 
state in order to raise a Polish army for herself. 
He was perfectly right, and if he had said that 



228 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

she had created a sham state in order to raise a 
real army, he would have been righter still. 

By August, 1917, the Provisional Council of 
State had ceased to be in any way representative 
of the Polish nation, for Pilsudski's party which 
contained all that was truly national in Poland 
no longer took any part in it. Fresh riots oc- 
curred in Warsaw owing to his imprisonment, 
and another impotent attempt was made on the 
part of Germany to induce the Polish legions to 
take the oath of ^ ^fraternity of arms" with the 
Central Powers. Feeling ran equally high in 
Galicia over Pilsudski's arrest, and in order to 
justify it von Beseler published the reasons for 
his imprisonment. These were: 

(i) He was the soul and spiritual leader of 
Polish national sentiment against Germany. 

(ii.) He had not declined the offer to com- 
mand the Polish army in Russia.* 

* The subsequent fate of this Polish army in Russia was as 
follows: The Eussian peace and the treaty with the Ukraine 
completely paralysed its potentialities, for it numbered only about 
15,000 men (exaggerated by report to 60,000), and there was no 
longer any Russian army for them to fight in conjunction with. 
Their commander. General Musnicki, therefore signed a treaty 
with Germany, by which the duties assigned to them were to de- 



THE POLISH LEGIONS 9^ 

The publication of this did not have the effect 
of cahning public feeling, it only enshrined Pil- 
sudski in the hearts of patriots. Then, since it did 
not serve its purpose, Germany resorted to di- 
recter measures of repression, and immediately 
afterwards she announced that the Polish aux- 
iliary corps, instead of preserving the slightest 
appearance of independence, as the nucleus for 
a national force, should be placed under Aus- 
trian command. The effect of this was that the 
National Council resigned in a body. 

(ii) FuRTHEK '' Independence " of Poland 

Chaos was now complete, and probably Germany 
intended that, for she was intending to '^ seraph' 
the constitution which she has proclaimed nearly 
a year before, since it had not produced for her 
that for which she had granted it, namely an army 
to fight her battles. In this year she had but 
succeeded in fusing the whole Polish population 
of the occupied territory into enmity against her, 

fend certain territories between the Dneiper and MoMleff from 
Bolshevik lawlessness. Germany, in fact, recognised his army as 
a neutral army. This was rather a melancholy conclusion, but it 
is dif&cult to see what else General Musnicki could have done. In 
any case, the Bolsheviks were no less a danger to Poland than to 
Eussia or Germany, and the solution was probably the best possible. 



230 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

and since they were now declared foes, she pro- 
ceeded to treat them as such. She had openly 
become a tyrant over a conquered people : she had 
imprisoned the man who voiced national senti- 
ment, she had tried to raise troops of another 
nation to fight for her, and now she proceeded to 
any sort of petty tyranny that suited her con- 
venience. She demanded that German schools in 
Poland, the management of which had in April 
been entnisted to Poles, should now be directly 
controlled from Berlin, and in spite of her having 
given matters dealing with education and jus- 
tice into the care of the Council of State, she 
closed Polish schools and opened new German 
ones. All matters connected with education and 
administration of justice were, for the future, to 
be dictated by German military control, and she 
ordained that the Governor-General might de- 
mand re-examination of the legitimacv of deci- 
sions in law-courts (so that if an anti-German 
verdict was returned, it could be revised) ; she re- 
served also to the Governor-General the right 
of approval or reversal of any measures passed by 
the country's representatives, in so far as they 
affected ''war-conditions,'' and again banished or 
imprisoned Polish students. Finally she directly 
threatened to annex such part of Poland as she 



THE POLISH LEGIONS 2S1 

needed for rectification of her frontier, leaving 
Austria to annex the remainder. The immediate 
effect of this would be to render all Poles liable 
to military service either with her or with Aus- 
tria. As a protest against this which was a frank 
and open repartition of the Poland she had de- 
clared independent, the Austrian Polish Social- 
ists, the peasant party and the National Demo- 
crats in the Reichsrat formed a hloc to demand 
an independent Poland with access to the sea. 
Austria remonstrated with her partner, and to- 
gether they settled to drop the final adjustment 
of Poland, at any rate till the end of the war^ 
scrapped the declaration of November 5th, 1916, 
and proceeded to announce a new system of gov- 
ernment. This was not done without strong and 
expressed warnings from Germany itself, and 
among others Prince Lichnowsky declared in the 
Berliner Tageblatt that the Polish question con- 
stituted for Germany the gravest question of the 
war, far, graver than that of Belgium or Alsace, 
and that she was playing with it in the manner 
of a child with a toy that would not work. He 
was quite right, for while Germany by these tyran- 
nies was acquiring material advantages for the 
Mittel-Europa policy in the way of expansion 



2S2 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

Eastwards, she was also building up against that 
expansion a solid wall of hate and antagonism. 

The patent for this new constitution appeared 
in the middle of September, 1917, and appointed : 

(i.) A EegencY Council of three members 
to be nominated by the two Emperors of the 
Central Powers. 

(ii.) An administrative Cabinet under the 
Presidency of the Prime Minister, who was to 
be appointed by the Regency Council. 

(iii.) A representative Parliament. 

The names of the Regency Council appeared by 
the end of the month, and consisted of Prince 
Lubomirski, Archbishop Kakowski and M. Ostrow- 
ski. These were to hold office until the appoint- 
ment of a Regent was made, and since they were 
appointed by the Central Empires, and in turn 
appointed a Premier, it can be conjectured that 
Poland was not intended to gain much measure 
of true autonomy, for Germany's hand was still 
on the throttle, to prevent any real development 
of horse-power. 

Of the three. Prince Lubomirski is the predomi- 
nant personality : He is a very able man, aristo- 



THE POLISH LEGIONS 233 

cratic and of Liberal tendencies. He has en- 
joyed considerable popularity since the occupa- 
tion of the country, first as chairman of the Citi- 
zens' Committee, and as President of Warsaw, 
and throughout has shewn great firmness and 
dignity in his dealings with the German authori- 
ties. M. Ostrowski is a wealthy landowner, who 
has worked with the group of Polish conserva- 
tives for a reconciliation with Russia. He has 
had more political experience than Lubomirski 
but lacks his ability, and is the victim of a strange 
nervous disease that causes him to fall asleep for 
several weeks at a time. His power of applica- 
tion to business therefore, is not particularly val- 
uable to anybody. Archbishop Kakowski is a man 
of common-sense but of narrow horizons who has 
no qualifications for a post of political authority. 
His appointment, as a Roman Catholic prelate, 
is chiefly interesting as an indication of a certain 
swaying of the balance again towards an Aus- 
trian solution which presently became a more pro- 
nounce4 movement. For some weeks after the 
appointment of this Council the post of the Prime 
Minister was vacant, for the Germans vetoed 
Count Tarnowski, the Austrian candidate, and it 
was not until the middle of November that M. Jan 
Kucharzewski was appointed, a man of ability and 



234 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

honesty but without much strength or decision, 
and a student of history rather than a maker of it. 
The swing of the pendulum, indicated by the 
personnel of the Regency council, towards some 
form of Austrian solution soon grew more marked, 
and it was understood that the Crown Council held 
in Berlin in November favoured the idea of the 
union of Poland and Galicia under the Emperor 
of Austria, while by w^ay of adjusting the balance 
Courland and Lithuania would be annexed by Ger- 
many. But though this scheme would be mani- 
festly to the advantage of Germany, since German 
influence would increase in the Reichsrat now that 
Polish deputies would no longer sit there but in 
the Diet of their new state, there were two vital 
objections to it which aroused the opposition of 
the entire German press. One was that such an- 
nexation was definitely contradictory to the ** no- 
annexation '^ doctrine officially proposed, the other 
that to take over Lithuania and Courland would 
be to incur the bitter and lasting enmity of Rus- 
sia. Russia might be at present an almost non- 
existent factor in international politics (and was 
soon to advance nearer vanishing point) but no 
sane politician could base his schemes on the im- 
possible premise of her total and permanent ex- 
tinction. A third objection, one, however, to 



THE POLISH LEGIONS ^35 

which Germany attached no weight whatever, was 
that the Little Russians (Ukrainians) who formed 
by far the largest national body in East Galicia 
would fight to the last gasp before being united 
with, and governed by a Polish state. Indeed this 
consideration, so far from being an objection in 
Germany ^s view, constituted an argument in fa- 
vour of this arrangement, since there would thus 
be bitter hostility between Ukrainians and Poles. 
Meantime the Polish Club in Vienna were strongly 
in favour of the Austrian solution, and it had 
many adherents among the Conservative Poles of 
Galicia, while Count Julius Audrassy writing 
semi-officially in the Fremden Blatt in December, 
1917, declared for it saying that Posen was in- 
alienable from Germany, but that Galicia formed 
a natural adjunct to the Kingdom of Poland. 
Equally significant as to the fact that some form 
of ^^ Austrian solution '^ though often rejected by 
Germany, was on the tapis again, was that Kuch- 
arzewski speaking of the reception of the Re- 
gency Cbuncil by the Emperor of Austria, in 
January, 1918, said that the union of Galicia and 
Poland was a heart-felt desire of the whole Polish 
nation. This statement followed immediately on 
a visit he had paid to Berlin, and was, if not au- 
thorized, allowed to remain uncontradicted. 



236 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

There were certainly more elements in this new 
constitution of a self-governing state than in any 
which Germany had yet permitted to take shape. 
Hitherto her main use for Poland had been that 
Poland should supply her with an army against 
Russia, and up till now she had declared that 
Poland must establish her claim for independence 
by shedding her blood for Germany. But now, in 
the swift disintegration of Russia there was no 
longer any need for a Germano-Polish army, and 
so she could be advanced a step towards inde- 
pendence and create an army for herself. Ger- 
many by no means wished to have a rebellious and 
discontented province in her sphere of occupa- 
tion, though in days gone by, she would sooner 
have been supplied with such an army as Pilsud- 
ski could have raised for her than satisfy the 
aspirations of the Poles. But now at last she con- 
sented, as an experiment, to Poland devoting her- 
self to her own coherence and stability, when sud- 
denly all was turmoil again, and the rights and 
territorial integrity granted to Poland were vio- 
lated more wantonly than ever before. For in 
February, 1918, there took place the peace-nego- 
tiations with Russia at Brest-Litovsk in which 
Poland claimed a voice, which was not granted 
her, and the Polish government thereupon stated 



THE POLISH LEGIONS 237 

that no agreement bearing on Poland's fate or 
prejudicing her rights would be accepted by the 
nation as legally binding. Then followed the 
Ukrainian peace, which sheared off the entire 
Government of Cholm, hitherto Polish, and gave 
it to the Ukraine, thereby making a fresh parti- 
tion which went a step further than even the Con- 
gress of Vienna had done, for it cut off 10,000 
square miles of territory from the Kingdom of 
Poland (by way of granting it independence) and 
created, if it was allowed to stand, a lasting frat- 
ricidal contest betw^een Poland and the Ukraine. 
The Austrian Poles retorted by a vigorous and 
successful move, supported by the Czechs, who 
opposed a treaty w^hich sowed discord between 
Slav peoples. The whole of the Polish Club in 
the Reichsrat under Baron von Goetz went over 
to the opposition and threatened to vote not only 
against the Budget, but against the Provisional 
budget about to be laid before the House; they 
also issued a unanimous manifesto demanding 
the presence of Polish representatives in the ne- 
gotiations at Brest-Litovsk, while in Poland it- 
self the whole Polish Cabinet with Kuckarzewski 
resigned. In the Reichsrat Glombinski, a Polish 
deputy, asserted the proclaimed independence of 
Poland and its right, as independent, to make its 



S38 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

I 



treaties, when they concerned its frontiers, with 
any other country, while Goluckowski read a simi- 
lar manifesto in the upper house. Similarly M. 
Daszynski a Polish Member of the Reichsrat is- 
sued an appeal to Austrian Poles on February 
18th, saying: 

^^The soil of Cholm and Podlasie has be- 
longed to Poland for centuries; both terri- 
tories are Poland's children, consecrated by 
the blood of her martyrdom. . . . Now it 
seems that this land is to serve as a bridge 
for German soldiers and goods on their march 
to Eastern Europe, to the Black Sea and the 
Caucasus. And the Poles, bereft of every in- 
dividual connection with the East, are to 
be plunged into deadly conflict with the 
Ukraine. ' ' 

This is a peculiarly interesting document, as 
shewing that the Mittel-Europa aims of Germany 
were appreciated by the Poles, and also that they 
grasped the second reason of this seizure of Po- 
lish territory, namely the German design to pro- 
duce enmity between the Ukraine and Poland, ac- 
cording to Germany's invariable policy. 



THE POLISH LEGIONS 239 

1 

Simultaneously the Poles received the official 
support of the British government to their pro- 
test, for it was announced in the Gazetta Naro- 
dowa of February 29th, that Count Sobanski, the 
recognised representative of the Polish National 
Committee in London had received official infor- 
mation from the Foreign Office that the British 
diplomatic agent in Kiev had been instructed to 
declare that England did not recognise the peace 
concluded between the Ukraine and the Central 
Empires, and would not recognise any peace with 
regard to which the interested Poles had not been 
consulted. 

This action of the Austrian Poles produced the 
desired effect, and the Central Powers under 
pressure this time from Austria, said they would 
reconsider the cession of Cholm to the Ukraine, 
and promised a mixed commission to decide on 
its fate with due regard to the wishes of its popu- 
lation. What conclusions the *' mixed commis- 
sion '^ will come to still remains to be seen. Kuhl- 
mann on behalf of Germany hinted at the pos- 
sibility of the new Polish frontier being moved 
eastwards instead of westwards, and simultane- 
ously at Brest-Litovsk, Count Czernin announced 
that he would welcome Polish representatives at 



S40 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 
t 

the negotiations. He declared that in his view 
Poland was an independent state, and that he de- 
sired the attachment of it to Austria, only if it 
was voluntary. The German press incidentally, 
bewailed the continued ingratitude of Poland, and 
the Union of German National Parties declared 
that German blood had been freely shed to secure 
the mdep&yidence of Polamd. Comment would be 
impertinent : we must only bow the head in rever- 
ence to the newly-discovered fact that one of Ger- 
many's objects in the war was the independence of 
Poland. Nobody had guessed that! 

Such in brief up till the end of February, 1918, 
is the history of Poland under German and Aus- 
trian occupation. Famine still reigns there, and 
though Austria in the autumn of 1917, made some 
attempt to alleviate it by starting an Agricultural 
Institute at Pulawy and granting supplies of 
grain and seed, Germany has limited herself to 
developing a market for her own trade, with 
branches at Warsaw, Lodz, Kalish, Grodno, Vilna, 
etc. She has also discovered coal-fields which she 
is working for her own consumption, and metallic 
deposits of tin and copper in the government of 
Kielce. 



THE POLISH LEGIONS Ml 

1 

Finally in December, 1917, what remained of 
the Polish lemons (Pilsuclski being still interned 
at Magdeburg) was sent, officers and men, to 
Galicia to join the Polish Relief Corps. Their 
final extinction occurred in March, 1918, when 
three regiments stationed in Bukovina mutinied, 
and two crossed the frontier to join the Polish 
army corps in the Ukraine, and the third was 
nearly annihilated in a fierce battle with the Aus- 
trians. Some remnants escaped and have now ar- 
rived in France, where to-day they are fighting on 
the Western front. Among them is General Haler, 
who was in command of the 2nd Brigade of the 
Polish legions when first they marched against 
Eussia in 1914. 

In a word, since Germany and Austria have oc- 
cupied Poland, they have ruled it merely by the 
momentary whims of a tyrannical despotism, 
promising it independence one day and fulfilling 
that promise by creating a sham administration, 
and tumbling that down the next day to make way 
for another cardboard constitution to meet the 
exigencies of some temporary crisis, and to mark 
time until they should agree between themselves 
what to do with the country. For cynical indiif er- 



242 THE WHITE EAGLE OF POLAND 

I - 

ence to the desire and to the sufferings of its in- 
habitants, and to their own promises, the rale 
of the Central Empires has created a new rec- 
ord which is likely to remain long nnchallengd. 



Note. — According to the latest news, it is reported 
that the Central Powers have come to an 
agreement about Poland, by which certain 
districts (Dombrova, Kalisch, and perhaps 
the Narev territory) will be retained by Ger- 
many, who will also have complete control 
over Lithuania, Courland and the Ukraine. 
Austria will obtain the rest of Poland, which 
she will incorporate with Galicia. Probably 
nothing definite has been arrived at, but there 
clearly is in 'the air a compromise which 
grants the Austrian solution with the counter- 
weight that part of Poland shall be German. 
This will mean that the ^independence'' 
promised to Poland by the Central Empires 
will merely end in a fresh partition. The 
Ukrainians of Eastern Galicia will, according 
to this arrangement, be under Polish rule, in 
order, as suggested above, to keep up a per- 
manent estrangement and hostility between 
them and the Poles. Should such an arrange- 



Map I 




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THE POLISH LEGIONS 243 

a 

ment be confirmed, it will probably imply the 
appointment of the Arch-Dnke Charles 
Stephen as Eegent of that part of Poland 
which falls to the Austrian Crown. 



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